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50i Ralph Waldo Emerson 




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'^ % SECOND SERIES # ^' 







C/S1-/1 






Gift 
Rev. Edwin H. Boo"kmy9r 
AprinO,1928 



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CONTENTS 



ESSAY I. 
The Poet . . . o 7 



ESBAY II. 
Experience 4B 

ESSAY IIL 
Chaeacteb 79 

ESSAY rv. 

Mannees .log 



ESSAY V. 
filHTs o . c 139 

ESSAY VI. 
Natuee . o 147 

ESSAY VIL 
Politics .' , 173 

ESSAY VIII. 
Nominalist and Realist 195 

NEW ENGLAND EEFORMEES. 

I^aSCTUBE AT AEMOEY HAIX W[ 



THE POET. 



A moody child and wildly wise 

Pursued the game with joyful eyes, 

Which chose, like meteors, their way, 

And rived the dark with private ray: 

They overleapt the horizon's edge. 

Searched with Apollo's privilege ; 

Through man, and woman, and sea, and star, 

Saw the dance of nature forward far ; 

Through worlds, and races, and terms, and time». 

Saw musical order, and pairing rhymes. 



Olympian bards who sung 

Divine ideas below, 
Which always find us younf^, 

Ana always keep us so. 



THE POET. 



Those who are esteemed umpires of taste are 
often persons who have acquired some knowledge 
of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an in- 
clination for whatever is elegant ; but if you 
inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and 
whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you 
learn that they are selfish and sensual. Their 
cultivation is local, as if you should rub a log of 
dry wood in one spot to produce fire, all the rest 
remaining cold. Their knowledge of the fine arts 
is some study of rules and particulars, or som© 
limited judgment of color or form, which is exer- 
cised for amusement or for show. It is a proof of 
the shallowness of the doctrine of beaut}^ as it 
lies in the minds of our amateurs, that men seem 
to have lost the perception of the instant depend- 
ence of form upon soul. There is no doctrine of 
forms in our philosophy. We were put into our 
bodies, as fire is put into a pan, to be carried 
about ; but there is no accurate adjustment be- 
tween the spirit and the organ, much less is the 
latter the germination of the former. So in re- 
gard to other forms, the intellectual mej;i do not 
believe in any essential dependence of the material 

(7) 



8 ESSAY I. 

world on thought and volition. Theologians think 
it a pretty air-castle to talk of the spiritual mean- 
ing of a ship or a cloud, of a city or a contract, 
but they prefer to come again to the solid ground 
r of historical evidence ; and even the poets are 
contented with a civil and conformed manner of 
living, and to write poems from the fancy, at a 
safe distance from their own experience. But the 
highest minds of the world have never ceased to 
explore the double meaning, or, shall I say, the 
quadruple, or the centuple, or much more mani- 
fold meaning, of every sensuous' fact : Orpheus, 
Empedocles, Heraclitus, Plato, Plutarch, Dante, 
Swedenborg, and the masters of sculpture, pic- 
ture, and poetry. For we are not pans and 
barrows, nor even porters of the fire and torch- 
bearers, but children of the fire, made of it, and 
only the same divinity transmuted, and at two or 
three removes, when we know least about it. And 
this hidden truth, that the fountains whence all 
this river of Time and its creatures, floweth, are 
intrinsically ideal and beautiful, draws us to the 
consideration of the nature and functions of the 
Poet, or the man of Beauty, to the means and 
materials he uses, and to the general aspect of the 
art in the present time. 

The breadth of the problem is great, for the 
poet is representative. He stands among partial 
men for the complete man, and apprises us not of 
Ms wealth, but of the commonwealth. The young 
man reveres men of genius, because, to speak 
truly, they are more himself than he is. They re^ 



THE POET. 9 

ceive of the soul as he also receives, but they 
more. Nature enhances her beauty, to the eye of 
loving men, from their belief that the poet is be- 
holding her shows at the same time. He is 
isolated among his contemporaries, by truth and 
by his art, but with this consolation in his pur- 
suits, that they will draw all men sooner or later. 
For all men live by truth, and stand in need of 
expression. In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, 
in hibor, in games, we study to utter our painful 
secret. The man is only half himself, the other 
half is his expression. 

Notwithstanding this necessity to be published, 
adequate expression is rare. I know not how^ it 
is that we need an interpreter ; but the great ma- 
jority of men seem to be minors, who have not 
yet come into possession of their own, or mutes, 
who cannot report the conversation they have had 
with nature. There is no man who does not an- 
ticipate a supersensual utility in the sun, and stars, 
earth, and water. These stand and wait to render 
him a peculiar service. But there is some obstruc- 
tion, or some excess of phlegm in our constitu- 
tion, which does not suffer them to yield the due 
effect. Too feeble fall the impressions of nature 
on us to make us artists. Every touch should 
thrill. Every man should be so much an artist, 
that he could report in conversation what had be- 
fallen him. Yet, in our experience, the rays or 
appulses have sufficient force to arrive at the 
senses, but not enough to reach the quick, and 
compel the reproduction of themselves in speech. 



lO ESSAY L 

, The poet is the person in whom these powers are 
in balance, the man without impediment, who 
sees and handles that which others dream of, 
traverses the whole scale of experience, and 
is representative of man, in virtue of being the 
largest power to receive and to impart. 

EoY the Universe has three children, born at 
one time, which reappear, under different names, 
in every system of thought, whether they be 
called cause, operation, and effect ; or, more 
poetically, Jove, Pluto, Neptune ; or, theologi- 
cally, the Father, the Spirit, and the Son ; but 
which we will call here, the Knower, the Doer, 
and. the Sayer. These stand respectively for 
the love of truth, for the love of good, and for 
the iove of beauty. These three are equal. Each 
is that which he is essentially, so that he cannot 
be surmounted or analyzed, and each of these three 
has the power of the others latent in him, and 
his own patent. 

The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents 
beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the 
centre. For the world is not painted, or adorned, 
but is from the beginning beautiful ; and God 
has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty 
is the creator of the universe. Therefore the poet 
is not any permissive potentate, but is emperor 
in his own right. Criticism is infested with a cant 
of materialism, which assumes that manual skill 
and activity is the first merit of all men, and dis- 
parages such as say and do not, overlooking the 
fact that some men, namely, poets, are natural 



THE POET. II 

sayers, sent into the world to the end of expres- 
sion, and confounds them with those whose prov- 
ince is action, but who quit it, to imitate the 
sayers. But Homer's words are as costly and ad- 
mirable to Homer, as Agamemnon's victories are 
to Agamemnon. The poet does not wait for the 
hero or the sage, but, as they act and think 
primarily, so he writes primarily what will and 
must be spoken, reckoning the others, though 
primaries also, yet, in respect to him, secondaries 
and servants ; as sitters or models in the studio 
of a painter, or as assistants who bring building 
materials to an architect. 

For poetry was all written before time was, 
and whenever we are so finely organized that we 
can penetrate into that region where the air is 
music, we hear those primal warblings, and at- 
tempt to write them down, but we lose ever and 
anon a word, or a verse, and substitute something 
of our OAvn, and thus miswrite the poem. The 
men of more delicate ear write down these 
cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, 
though imperfect, become the songs of the nations. 
For nature is as truly beautiful as it is good, or as it 
is reasonable, and must as much appear, as it must 
be done, or be known. Words and deeds are quite 
indifferent modes of the divine energy. Words 
are also actions, and actions are a kind of words. 

The sign and credentials of the jDoet are, that he 
announces that which no man foretold. He is the 
true and only doctor ; he knows and tells ; he is 
the only teller of news, for he was present and 



12 £:SSAV I. 

privy to the appearance which he describes. He is a 
beholder of ideas, and an utterer of the necessary 
and causal. For we do not speak now of men of 
poetical talents, or of industry and skill in metre, 
iQut of the true poet. I took part in a conversation 
the other day, concerning a recent writer of lyrics, 
a man of subtle mind, whose head appeared to be 
a music-box of delicate tunes and rhythms, and 
whose skill, and command of language we could 
not sufficiently praise. But when the question 
arose, whether he was not only a lyrist, but a 
poet, we were obliged -to confess that he is 
plainly a contemporary, not an eternal man. He 
does not stand out of our low limitations, like a 
Chimborazo under the line, running up from the 
torrid base through all the climates of the globe, 
with belts of the herbage of every latitude on 
its high and mottled sides ; but this genius is the 
landscape-garden of a modern house, adorned with 
fountains and statues, with well-bred men and 
women standing and sitting in the walks and 
terraces. We hear, through all the varied music, 
the ground-tone of conventional life. Our poets 
are men of talents who sing, and not the children 
of music. The argument is secondary, the finish 
of the verses is primary. 

For it is not metres, but a metre-making argu- 
ment, that makes a poem, — a thought so pas- 
sionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or 
an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and 
adorns nature with a new thing. The thought 
and the form are equal in the order of time, but 



THE POET. 13 

in the order of genesis the thought is prior to the 
form. The poet has a new thought: he has a 
whole new experience to unfold ; he will tell us 
how it was with him, and all men will be the 
richer in his fortune. For, the experience of 
each new age requires a new confession, and the 
world seems always waiting for its poet. I re- 
member, when I was young, how much I was 
moved one morning by tidings that genius had 
appeared in a youth who sat near me at table. 
He had left his work, and gone rambling none 
knew whither, and had written hundreds of lines, 
but could not tell whether that which was in him 
was therein told: he could tell nothing but that 
all was changed, — man, beast, heaven, earth, and 
sea. How gladly we listened I how credulous! 
Society seemed to be compromised. We sat in 
the aurora of a sunrise which was to put out all 
the stars. Boston seemed to be at twice the 
distance it had the night before, or was much 
farther than that. Rome, — what was Rome? 
Plutarch and Shakespeare were in the yellow leaf, 
and Homer no more should be heard of. It is 
much to know that poetry has been written this 
very day, under this very roof, by your side. 
What! that wonderful spirit has not expired! 
these stony moments are still sparkling and ani- 
mated! I had fancied that the oracles were all 
silent, and nature had spent her fires, and be- 
hold ! all night, from every pore, these fine auroras 
have been streaming. Every one has some in- 
terest in the advent of the poet, and no one 



14 ESSAV /. 

knows how much it may concern him. We know 
that the secret of the world is profound, but who 
or what shall be our interpreter, we know not. 
A mountain ramble, a new style of face, a new 
person, may put the key into our hands. Of 
course, the value of genius to us is in the veracity 
of its report. Talent may frolic and juggle ; 
genius realizes and adds. Mankind, in good 
earnest, have availed so far in understanding 
themselves and their work, that the foremost 
watchman on the peak announces his news. It is 
the truest Word ever spoken, and the phrase will 
be the fittest, most musical, and the unerring 
voice of the world for that time. 

All that we call sacred history attests that the 
birth of a poet is the principal event in chronol- 
ogy. Man, never so often deceived, still watches 
for the arrival of a brother who can hold him 
steady to a truth, until he has made it his own. 
With what joy I begin to read a poem, which I 
confide in as an inspiration I And now my chains 
are to be broken ; I shall mount above these 
clouds and opaque airs in which I live, — opaque, 
though they seem transparent, — and from the 
heaven of truth I shall see and comprehend my 
relations. That will reconcile me to life, and 
renovate nature, to see trifles animated by a ten- 
dency, and to know what I am doing. Life will 
no more be a noise ; now I shall see men and 
women, and know the signs by which they ma}'' be 
discerned from fools and satans. This day shall 
be better than my birthday: then I became an 



THE POET, 15 

animal : now I am invited into the science of the 
real. Such is the hope, but the fruition is post- 
poned. Oftener it falls, that this winged man, 
who will carry me into the heaven, whirls me into 
the clouds, then leaps and frisks about with me 
from cloud to cloud, still affirming that he is 
bound heavenward; and I, being myself a novice. 
am slow in perceiving that he does not know the 
way into the heavens, and is merely bent that I 
should admire his skill to rise, like a fowl or a 
flying fish, a little way from the ground or the 
water ; but the all-piercing, all-feeding, and ocular 
air of heaven, that man shall never inhabit. I 
tumble down again soon into my old nooks, and 
lead the life of exaggerations as before, and have 
lost my faith in the possibility of any guide who 
can lead me thither where I would be. 

But leaving these victims of vanity, let us, with 
new hope, observe how nature, by worthier im- 
pulses, has ensured the poet's fidelity to his office 
of announcement and affirming, namely, by the 
beauty of things, which becomes a new, and 
higher beauty, when expressed. Nature offers all 
her creatures to him as a picture-language. Be- 
ing used as a type, a second wonderful value ap- 
pears in the object, far better than its old value, 
as the carpenter's stretched cord, if you hold your 
ear close enough, is musical in the breeze. 
" Things more excellent than every image," says 
Jamblichus, " are expressed through images." 
Things admit of being used as symbols, because 
nature is a symbol, in the whole, and in every 



l6 ESSAV I. 

part. Every line we can draw in the sand has 
expression ; and there is no body without its spirit 
or genius. All form is an effect of character ; all 
condition, of the quality of the life ; all harmony, 
of health ; (and, for this reason, a perception of 
beauty should be sympathetic, or proper only to 
tlie good). The beautiful rests on the foundations 
of the necessary. The soul makes the body, as 
the wise Spenser teaches : 

*' So every spirit, as it is most pure, 
And hath in it the more of heavenly light, 
So it the fairer body dotli procure 
To habit in, and it more fairly dight, 
"With cheerful grace and amiable sight. 
For, of the soul, the body form doth take, 
For soul is form, and doth the body make." 

Here we find ourselves, suddenly, not in a critical 
speculation, but in a holy place, and should go 
very warily and reverently. We stand before the 
secret of the world, there where Being passes into 
Appearance, and Unity into Variety. 

The Universe is the externisation of the soul. 
Wherever the life is, that bursts into appearance 
around it. Our science is sensual, and therefore 
superficial. The earth, and the heavenly bodies, 
physics, and chemistry, we sensually treat, as if 
they were self-existent ; but these are the retinue 
of that Being we have. " The mighty heaven," 
said Proclus, " exhibits, in its transfigurations, 
clear images of the splendor of intellectual per- 
ceptions : being moved in conjunction with the 
unapparent periods of intellectual natures.'* 



, THE POET, 17 

Therefore, science always goes abreast with the 
just elevation of the man, keeping step with relig- 
ion and metaphysics ; or, the state of science is 
an index of our self-knowledge. Since everj- thing 
in nature answers to a moral power, if any phe- 
nomenon remains brute and dark, it is that the 
corresponding faculty in the observer is not yet. 
active. / 

No wonder, then, if these waters be so deep, 
that we hover over them with a religious regard. 
The beauty of the fable proves the importance of 
the sense; to the poet, and to all others; or, if 
you please, every man is so far a poet as to be 
susceptible of these enchantments of nature ; for 
all men have the thoughts whereof the universe 
is the celebration, I find that the fascination re- 
sides in the symbol. Who loves nature ? Who 
does not ? Is it only poets, and men of leisure 
and cultivation, who live with her ? No : but also 
hunters, farmers, grooms, and butchers, though 
they express their affection in their choice of life, 
and not in their choice of words. The writer won- 
ders what the coachman or the hunter values in 
riding, in horses, and dogs. It is not superficial 
qualities. When you talk with him, he holds 
these at as slight a rate as you. His worship is 
eympathetic ; he has no definitions, but he is com- 
manded in nature, by the living power which he 
feels to be there present. No imitation, or play- 
ing of these things, would content him ; he loves 
the earnest of the north wind, of rain, of stone, 
and wood, and iron. A beauty not explicable, is 
23 



I8 ESSAV I. 

dearer than a beauty which we can see to the end 
of. It is nature the symbol, nature certifying the 
supernatural, body overflowed by life, which he 
worships, with coarse, but sincere rites. 

The inwardness, and mystery, of this attach- 
ment drives men of every class to the use of em 
blems. The schools of poets, and philosophers, 
are not more intoxicated with their symbols than 
the populace with theirs. In our political parties, 
compute the power of badges and emblems. See 
the great ball which they roll from Baltimore to 
Bunker hill ! In the political processions, Lowell 
goes in a loom, and Lynn in a shoe, and Salem in 
a ship. Witness the cider-barrel, the log-cabin, 
the hickory -stick, the palmetto, and all the cogni- 
zances of party. See the power of national em- 
blems. Some stars, lilies, leopards, a crescent, a 
lion, an eagle, or other figure, which came into 
credit God knows how, on an old rag of bunting, 
blowing in the wind, on a fort, at the ends of the 
earth, shall make the blood tingle under the 
rudest, or the most conventional exterior. The 
people fancy they hate poetry, and they are all 
poets and mystics I 

Beyond this universality of the symbolic lan- 
guage, we are apprised of the divineness of this 
superior use of things, whereby the world is a 
temple, whose walls are covered with emblems, 
pictures, and commandments of the Deity, in this, 
that there is no fact in nature which does not 
carry the whole sense of nature; and the distinc- 
tions which we make in events, and in affairs, of 



THE POET. • 19 

low and high, honest and base, disappear when 
nature is used as a symbol. Thought makes 
everything fit for use. The vocabuhiry of an om- 
niscient man would embrace words and images 
excluded from polite conversation. What would 
be base, or even obscene, to the obscene, becomes 
illustrious, spoken in a new connection of thought. 
The piet}^ of the Hebrew prophets purges their 
grossness. The circumcision is an example of the 
power of poetry to raise the low and offensive. 
Small and mean things serve as well as great sym- 
bols. The meaner the type by which a law is 
expressed, the more pungent it is, and the more 
lasting in the memories of men : just as we choose 
the smallest box, or case, in which any needful 
utensil can be carried. Bare lists of words are 
found suggestive, to an imaginative and excited 
mind ; as it is related of Lord Chatham, that he 
was accustomed to read in Bailey's Dictionary, 
when he was preparing to speak in Parliament. 
The poorest experience is rich enough for all the 
purposes of expressing thought. Why covet a 
knowledge of new facts? Day and night, house 
and garden, a few books, a few actions, serve us 
as well as would all trades and all spectacles. We 
are far from having exhausted the significance of 
the few symbols we use. We can come to use 
them yet with a terrible simplicity. It does not 
need tiiat a poem should be long. Every word 
was once a poem. Every new relation is a new 
word. Also, we use defects and deformities 
to a sacred purpose, so expressing our sense that 



20 • ESSAY J. 

the evils of the world are such only to the evil 
eye. In the old mythology, mythologists observe, 
defects are ascribed to divine natures, as lameness 
to Vulcan, blindness to Cupid, and the like, to 
signify exuberances. 

For, as it is dislocation and detachment from 
the life of God, that makes things ugly, the poet, 
who re-attaches things to nature and the Whole, 
. — re-attaching even artificial things, and viola- 
tions of nature, to nature, by a deeper insight, — • 
disposes very easily of the most disagreeable 
facts. Readers of poetry see the factory -village 
and the railway, and fancy that the poetry of the 
landscape is broken up by these ; for these works 
of art are not yet consecrated in their reading ; 
but the poet sees them fall within the great Or- 
der not less than the bee -hive, or the spider's 
geometrical web. Nature adopts them very fast 
into her vital circles, and the gliding train of cars 
she loves like her own. Besides, in a centred mind, 
it signifies nothing how many mechanical inven- 
tions you exhibit. Though you add millions, and 
never so surprising, the fact of mechanics has not 
gained a grain's weight. The spiritual fact re^ 
mains unalterable, by. many or by few particulars; 
as no mountain is of any appreciable height to 
break the curve of the sphere. A shrewd coun- 
try-boy goes to the city for the first time, and the 
complacent citizen is not satisfied with his little 
wonder. It is not that he does not see all the fine 
houses, and know that he never saw such before, 
but he disposes of them as easily as the poet finds 



THE POET, 21 

place for the railway. The chief value of the 
new fact, is to enhance the great and constant 
fact of Life, which can dwarf any and every cir- 
cumstance, and to which the belt of wampum, 
and the commerce of America, are alike. 

T]ie world being thus put under the mind for 
verb and noun, the poet is he who can articulate 
it. For, thowgh life is great, and fascinates, and 
absorbs, — and thougli all men are intelligent of 
the symbols through which it is named, — yet they 
cannot originally use them. We are symbols, and 
inhabit symbols ; workman, work, and tools, 
words and things, birth and death, all are em- 
blems; but we sympathize with the symbols, and, 
being infatuated with the economical uses of 
things, we do not know that they are thoughts. 
The poet, by an ulterior intellectual perception, 
gives them a power which makes their old use 
forgotten, and puts eyes, and a tongue, into every 
dumb and inanimate object. He perceives the in- 
dependence of the thought on the symbol, the 
stability of the thought, the accidency and fagac- 
it}^ of the symbol. As the eyes of Lyncaeus were 
said, to see through the earth, so the poet turns 
the world to glass, and shows us all things in 
Uieir right series and procession. For, through 
that better perception, he stands one step nearer 
to things, and sees the flowing or metamorphosis ; 
perceives that thought is multiform ; that within 
the form of every creature is a force impelling it 
to ascend into a higher form ; and, following with 
his eyes the life, uses the forms which express 



22 ESSAY I. 

that life, and so his. speech flows with the flowing of 
nature. All the facts of the animal economy, sex.^ 
nutriment, gestation, birth, growth, are symbols of 
the passage of the world into the soul of man, to 
suffer there a change, and reappear a new and higher 
fact. He uses forms according to the life, and not 
according to the form. This is true science. The 
poet alone knows astronomy, chemistry, vegetation, 
and animation, for he does not stop at these facts, 
but employs them as signs. He knows why the 
plain, or meadow of space, was strewn with these 
flowers we call suns, and moons, and stars ; why 
the great deep is adorned with animals, with men, 
and gods ; for, in every word he speaks he rides 
on them as the horses of thought. 

By virtue of this science the poet is the Namer, 
or Language-maker, naming things sometimes af- 
ter their appearance, sometimes after their essence, 
and giving to every one its own name, and not 
another's, thereby rejoicing the intellect, which de- 
lights in detachment or boundary. The poet made 
all the words, and therefore language is the archives 
of history, and, if we must say it, a sort of tomb 
of the muses. For, though the origin of most of 
our words is forgotten, each word was at first a 
stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because 
for the moment it symbolized the world to the 
first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist 
finds the deadest word to have been once a bril- 
liant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the 
limestone of the continent consists of infinite 
maPjses of the shells of animalcules, so language 



THE POET. 23 

is made up of images, or tropes, which now, in 
their secondary use, have long ceased to remind 
us of their poetic origin. But the poet names 
the thing because he sees it, or comes one step 
nearer to it than any other. This expression, or 
naming, is not art, but a second nature, grown 
out of the first, as a leaf out of a tree. What we 
call nature is a certain self-regulated motion, or 
change ; and nature does all things by her own 
hands, and does not leave another to baptize her, 
but baptizes herself; and this through the meta- 
morphosis again. I remember that a certain poet 
described it to me thus : 

Genius is the activity which repairs the decays 
of things, whether wholly or partly of a material 
and finite kind. Nature, through all her king- 
doms, insures herself. Nobody cares for planting 
the poor fungus : so she shakes down from the 
gills of one agaric countless spores, any one of 
which, being preserved, transmits new billions of 
spores to-morrow or next day. The new agaric 
of this hour has a chance which the old one had 
not. This atom of seed is thrown into a new 
place, not subject to the accidents which destroyed 
its parent two rods off. She makes a man ; and 
having brought him to ripe age, she will no longer 
run the risk of losing this wonder at a blow, but 
she detaches from him a new self, that the kind 
may be safe from accidents to Avhich the individ- 
ual is exposed. So when the soul of the poet has 
come to ripeness of thought, she detaches and 



24 ESSAY L 

sends away from it its poems or songs, — a fearless, 
sleepless, deathless progeny, which is not exposed 
to the accidents of the weary kingdom of time : 
a fearless, vivacious oifspring, clad with wings, 
(such was the virtue of the soul out of which 
they came), which carry them fast and far, and 
infix them irrecoverably into the hearts of meuo 
These wings are the beauty of the poet's soul. 
The songs, thus flying immortal from their mor- 
tal parent, are pursued by clamorous flights of 
censures, which swarm in far greater numbers, and 
threaten to devour them ; but these last are not 
winged. At the end of a very short leap they fall 
plump down, and rot, having received from the 
souls out of which they came no beautiful wings. 
But the melodies of the poet ascend, and leap, 
and pierce into the deeps of infinite time. 

So far the bard taught me, using his freer 
speech. But nature has a higher end, in the pro- 
duction of new individuals, than security, namely, 
ascension^ or, the passage of the soul into higher 
forms. I knew, in my younger days, the sculptor 
who made the statue of the youth which stands in 
the public garden. He was, as 1 remember, un- 
able to tell, directly, what made him happy, or 
unhappy, but by wonderful indirections he could 
tell. He rose one day, according to his habit, be- 
fore the dawn, and saw the morning break, grand 
as the eternity out of which it came, and, for 
' many days after, he strove to express this tran- 
quillity, and, lo ! his chisel had fashioned out of 



THE POET. 25 

marble the form of a beautiful youth, Phosphorus, 
whose aspect is such, that, it is said, all persons 
who look on it become silent. The poet also re- 
signs himself to his mood, and that thought which 
agitated him is expressed, but alter idem^ in a 
manner totally new. The expression is organic, 
or, the new type which things themselves take 
when liberated. As, in the sun, objects paint 
their images on the retina of the eye, so they, 
sharing the aspiration of the whole universe, tend 
to paint a far more delicate copy of their essence 
in his mind. Like the metamorphosis of things 
into higher organic forms, is their change into 
melodies. Over everything stands its daemon, or 
soul, and, as the form of the thing is reflected by 
'the eye, so the soul of the thing is reflected by a 
melody. The sea, the mountain-ridge, Niagara, 
and every flower-bed, pre-exist, or super-exist, in 
pre-cantations, which sail like odors in the air, and 
when any man goes by with an ear sufficiently 
fine, he overhears them, and endeavors to write 
down the notes, without diluting or depraving 
them. And herein is the legitimation of criti- 
cism, in the mind's faith, that the poems are a cor- 
rupt version of some text in nature, with which 
they ought to be made to tally. A rhyme in one 
of our sonnets should not be less pleasing than 
the iterated nodes of a sea-shell, or the resembling 
difference of a group of flowers. The pairing of 
the birds is an idyl, not tedious as our idyls are ; 
a tempest is a rough ode without falsehood or 
rant ; a summer, with its harvest sown, reaped, 



26 ESSAY I. 

and stored, is an epic song, subordinating how 
many admirably executed parts. Why should not 
the symmetry and truth that modulate these, 
glide into our spirits, and we participate the in- 
vention of nature ? 

This insight, which expresses itself by what is 
called Imagination, is a very high sort of seeing, 
which does not come by study, but by the intel- 
lect being where and what it sees, by sharing the 
path, or circuit of things through forms, and so 
making them translucid to others. The path of 
things is silent. Will they suffer a speaker to go 
with them ? A spy they will not suffer ; a lover, 
a poet, is the transcendency of their own nature, 
— him they will suffer. The condition of true 
naming, on the poet's part, is his resigning him- 
self to the divine aura which breathes through 
forms, and accompanying that. 

It is a secret which every intellectual man 
quickly learns, that, bej^ond the energy of his 
possessed and conscious intellect, he is capable 
of a new energy (as of an intellect doubled 
on itself), by abandonment to the nature of 
things : that, besides his privacy of power as an 
individual man, there is a great public power, 
on which he can draw, by unlocking, at all 
risks, his human doors, and suffering the ethereal 
tides to roll and circulate through him : then he is 
caught up into the life of the Universe, his speech 
is thunder, his thought is law, and his words are 
universally intelligible as the plants and animals. 
The poet knows that he speaks adequately, then. 



THE POET. 27 

only when he speaks somewhat wildly, or, " with 
the flower of the mind ; " not with the intellect, 
used as an organ, but Avith the intellect released 
from all service, and suffered to take its direction 
from its celestial life ; or, as the ancients were 
wont to express themselves, not with intellect 
alone, but with the intellect inebriated by nectar. 
As the traveller who has lost his way, throws his 
reins on his horse's neck, and trusts to the instinct 
of the animal to find his road, so must we do with 
the divine animal who carries us through this 
world. . For if in any manner we can stimulate 
this instinct, new passages are opened for us into 
nature, the mind flows into and through things 
hardest and highest, and the metamorphosis is 
possible. 

This is the reason why bards love wine, mead, 
narcotics, coffee, tea, opium, the fumes of sandal- 
wood and tobacco, or whatever other species of 
animal exhilaration. All men avail themselves of 
such means as they can, to add this extraordinary 
power to their normal powers; and to this en(2 
they prize conversation, music, pictures, sculp- 
ture, dancing, theatres, travelling, war, mobs, fires, 
gaming, politics, or love, or science, or animal in- 
toxication, which are several coarser or finer 
^ifrtsz'-mechanical substitutes for the true nectar, 
which is the ravishment of the intellect by coming 
nearer to the fact. These are auxiliaries to the 
centrifugal tendency of a man, to his passage out 
into free space, and they help him to escape the 
custody of that body in Avhich he is pent up, and 



28 ESSAY I. 

of that jail-yard of individual relations in which 
he is enclosed. Hence a great number of such as 
were professionally expressors of Beauty, as paint- 
ers, poets, musicians, and actors, have been more 
than others wont to lead a life of " pleasure and in- 
dulgence ; all but the few who received the true 
nectar; and, as it was a spurious mode of attain- 
ing freedom, as it was an emancipation not into 
the heavens, but into the freedom of baser places, 
they were punished for that advantage they won, 
by a dissipation and deterioration. But never can 
any advantage be taken of nature by a trick. The 
spirit of the world, the great calm presence of the 
creator, Qomes not forth to the sorceries of opium 
or of wine. The sublime vision comes to the pure 
and simple soul in a clean and chaste body. That 
is not an inspiration which we owe to narcotics, 
but some counterfeit excitement and fury. Milton 
says, that the lyric poet may drink wine and live 
generously, but the epic poet, he who shall sing 
of the gods, and their descent unto men, must 
drink water out of a wooden bowl. For poetry 
is not ' Devil's wine,' but God's wine. It is with 
this as it is with toys. We fill the hands and nur- 
series of our children with all manner of dolls, 
drums, and horses, withdrawing their eyes from 
the plain face and sufficing objects of nature, the 
sun, and moon, the animals, the water, and stones, 
which should be their toys. So the poet's habit 
of living should be set on a key so low and plain, 
that the common influences should delight him. 
His cheerfulness should be the gift of the sun- 



'THE POET. 29 

light ; the air should suffice for his inspiration, 
and he should be tipsy with water. That spirit 
which suffices quiet hearts, which seems to come 
forth to such from every dry knoll of sere grass, 
from every pine-stump, and half-imbedded stone, 
oil which the dull March sun shines, comes forth 
to the poor and hungry, and such as are of simple 
taste. If thou fill th}^ brain with Boston and 
New York, with fashion and covetousness, and 
wilt stimulate thy jaded senses with wine and 
French coffee, thou shalt find no radiance of wis- 
dom in the lonely waste of the pine woods. 

If the imagination intoxicates tlie poet, it is not 
inactive in other men. The metamorphosis excites 
in the beholder an emotion of joy. The use of 
symbols has a certain power of emancipation and 
exhilaration for all men. We seem to be touched 
by a wand, which makes us dance and run abou< 
happily, like children. We are like persons who 
come out of a cave or cellar into the open air. 
This is the effect on us of tropes, fables, oracles, 
and all poetic forms. Poets are thus liberating 
gods. Men have really got a new sense, and 
found within their world, another world, or nest 
of worlds ; for, the metamorphosis once seen, we 
divine that it does not stop. I will not now con- 
sider how much this makes the charm of algebra 
and the mathematics, which also have their tropes, 
but it is felt in every definition ; as, when Aris- 
totle defines ^i^ace to be an immovable vessel, in 
which things are contained ; — or, when Plato de- 
fines a line to be a flowing point ; or, figure to be 



30 ESSAV /. 

a bound of solid ; and many the like. What a 
joyful sense of freedom we have, when Vitruvius 
announces the old opinion of artists, that no 
architect can build any house well, who does not 
know something of anatomy. When Socrates, in 
Charm ides, tells us that the soul is cured of its 
maladies by certain incantations, and that these 
incantations are beautiful reasons, from which 
temperance is generated in souls ; when Plato calls 
the world an animal ; and Timseus affirms that the 
plants also" are animals ; or affirms a man to be a 
heavenly tree, growing with his root, which is his 
head, upward ; and, as George Chapman, follow- 
ing him, writes, — 

"So in our tree of man, whose nervie root 
Springs in his top; " 

when Orpheus speaks of hoariness as " that white 
flower which marks extreme old age ; " when 
Proclus calls the universe the statue of the intel- 
lect ; when Chaucer, in his praise of ' Gentilesse,' 
compares good blood in mean condition to fire, 
which, though carried to the darkest house be- 
twixt this and the mount of Caucasus, will yet 
hold its natural office, and burn as bright as if 
twenty thousand men did it behold ; when John 
saw, in the apocalypse, the ruin of the world 
through evil, and the stars fall from heaven, as the 
figtree casteth her untimely fruit ; when ^sop 
reports the whole catalogue of common daily re- 
lations through the masquerade of birds and 
beasts ; — we take the cheerful hint of the immor- 



THE POET, 31 

tality of our essence, and its versatile habit and 
escapes, as when the gypsies say, '' it is in vain to 
hang them, they cannot die." 

The poets are thus liberating gods. The ancient 
British bards had for the title of their order, 
'* Those who are free throughout the world." 
They are free, and they make free. An imagina- 
tive book renders us much more service at first, by 
stimulating us through its tropes, than afterward, 
when we arrive at the precise sense of the author. 
I think nothing is of any value in books, except- 
ing the transcendental and extraordinary. If a 
man is inflamed and carried away by his thought, 
to that degree that he forgets the authors and the 
public, and heeds only this one dream, which holds 
him like an insanity, let me read his paper, and 
you may have all the arguments and histories and 
criticism. All the value which attaches to Pytha- 
goras, Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, Cardan, 
Kepler, Swedenborg, Schelling, Oken, or any other 
who introduces questionable facts into his cos- 
mogony, as angels, devils, magic, astrology, palm- 
istry, mesmerism, and so on, is the certificate we 
have of departure from routine, and that here is 
a new witness. That also is the best success in 
conversation, the magic of liberty, which puts the 
world, like a ball, in our hands. How cheap sven 
the liberty then seems ; how mean to study, when 
an emotion communicates to the intellect the 
po.wer to sap and upheave nature ; how great the 
perspective ! nations, times, systems, enter and 
disappear, like threads in tapestry of large figure 



32 ESSAY I. 

and many colors ; dream delivers us to dream, 
and, while the drunkenness lasts, we will sell our 
bed, our philosophy, our religion, in our opulence. 

There is good reason why we should prize this 
liberation. The fate of the poor shepherd, who, 
blinded and lost in the snow-storm, perishes in a 
drift within a few feet of his cottage door, is an 
emblem of the state of man. On the brink of the 
waters of life and truth, we are miserably dying. 
The inaccessibleness of every thought but that 
we are in, is wonderful. What if you come near 
to it, — you are as remote, when you are nearest, 
as when you are farthest. Every thought is also 
a prison ; every heaven is also a prison. There- 
fore we love the poet, the inventor, who in any 
form, whether in an ode, or in an action, or in 
looks and behavior, has yielded us a new thought. 
He unlocks our chains, and admits us to a new scene. 

This emancipation is dear to all men, and the 
power to impart it, as it must come from greater 
depth and scope of thought, is a measure of intel- 
lect. Therefore all books of the imagination 
endure, all which ascend to that truth, that the 
writer sees nature beneath him, and uses it as his 
exponent. Every verse or sentence, possessing 
this virtue, will take care of its own immortality. 
The religions of the world are the ejaculations of 
a few imaginative men. 

But the quality of the imagination is to flow, 
and not to freeze. The poet did not stop at the 
color, or the form, but read their meaning ; neither 
may he rest in this meaning, but he makes the 



THE POET, 33 

same objects exponents of his new thought. Here 
is the difference betwixt the poet and the mystic, 
that the last nails a symbol to one sense, which 
was a true sense for a moment, but soon becomes 
old and false. For all symbols are fluxional ; all 
language is vehicular and transitive, and is good, 
as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, not as 
farms and houses are, for homestead. Mysticism 
consists in the mistake of au accidental and indi- 
vidual symbol for an universal one. The morning- 
redness happens to be the favorite meteor to the 
eyes of Jacob Behmen, and comes to stand to him 
for truth and faith ; and he believes should stand 
for the same realities to every reader. But the 
first reader prefers as naturally the symbol of a 
mother and child, or a gardener and his bulb, or a 
jeweller polishing a gem. Either of these, or of 
a myriad more, are equally good to the person to 
whom they are significant. Only they must be 
held lightly, and be very willingly translated into 
the equivalent terms which others use. And the 
mystic must be steadily told, — All that you say is 
just as true without the tedious use of that symbol 
as with it. Let us have a little algebra, instead 
of this trite rhetoric, — universal signs, instead of 
these village symbols, — and we shall both be gain- 
ers. The history of hierarchies seems to show, 
that all religious error consisted in making the 
symbol too stark and solid, and, at last, nothhig 
but an excess of the organ of language. 

Sweden borg, of all men in the recent ages, 
stands eminently for the translator of nature into 
B 



34 ESSAY I. 

thought. I do not know the man in history to 
whom things stood so uniformly for words. Be- 
fore him the metamorphosis continually plays. 
Everything on which his eye rests, obeys the im- 
pulses of moral nature. The figs become grapes 
whilst he eats them. When some of his angels 
affirmed a truth, the laurel twig which they held 
blossomed in their hands. The noise which, at a 
distance, appeared like gnashing and thumping, 
on coming nearer was found to be the voice of 
disputants. The men, in one of his visions, seen 
in heavenly light, appeared like dragons, and 
seemed in darkness ; but, to each other, they ap- 
peared as men, and, when the light from heaven 
shone into their cabin, they complained of the 
darkness, and were compelled to shut the window 
that they might see. 

There was this perception in him, which makes 
the poet or seer an object of awe and terror, 
namely, that the same man, or society of men, 
may wear one aspect to themselves and their com- 
panions, and a different aspect to higher intelli- 
gences. Certain priests, whom he describes as 
conversing very learnedly together, appeared tc 
the children, who were at some distance, like dead 
iiorses: and many the like misappearances. And 
instantly the mind inquires, whether these fishes I 
under the bridge, yonder oxen in the pasture, 
those dogs in the yard, are immutably fishes, 
oxen, and dogs, or only so appear to me, and per- 
chance to themselves appear upright men ; and 
whether I appear as a man to all eyes. The 



THE POET. 35 

Bramins and Pythagoras propounded the same 
question, and if any poet has witnessed the trans- 
formation, he doubtless found it in harmony with 
various experiences. We have all seen changes 
as considerable in wheat and caterpillars. He is 
the poet, and shall draw us with love and terror, 
who sees, through the flowing vest, the firm na- 
ture, and can declare it. 

I look in vain for the poet whom I describe. 
We do not, with sufficient plainness, or sufficient 
profoundness, address ourselves to life, nor dare 
we chaunt our own times and social circumstance. 
Jf we filled the day with bravery, we should not 
shrink from celebrating it. Time and nature 
yield us many gifts, but not yet the timely man, 
the new religion, the reconciler, whom all things 
await. Dante's praise is, that he dared to write 
his autobiography in colossal cipher, or into uni- 
versality. We have yet had no genius in Amer- 
ica, with tyrannous eye, which knew the value of 
our incomparable materials, and saw, in the bar- 
barism and materialism of the times, another 
carnival of the same gods whose picture he so 
much admires in Homer; then in the middle age, 
then in Calvinism. Banks and tariffs, the news* 
paper and caucus, methodism and unitarianism, 
are flat and dull to dull people, but rest on the 
same foundations of wonder as the town of Troy, 
and the temple of Delphos, and are as swiftly 
passing awa}^ Our log-rolling, our stumps and 
their politics, our fisheries, our Negroes, and 
Indians, our boats, and our repudiations, the 



36 ESSAV I. 

wrath of rogues, and the pusillanimity of honest 
men, the northern trade, the southern planting, 
the western clearing, Oregon, and Texas, are yet 
unsung. Yet America is a poem in our eyes ; its 
ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it 
will not wait long for metres. If I have not 
found that excellent combination of gifts in my 
countrymen which I seek, neither could I aid my- 
self to fix the idea of the poet by reading now 
and then in Chalmers's collection of five centuries 
of English poets. These are wits, more than 
poets, though there have been poets amoug them. 
But when we adhere to the ideal of the poet, we 
have our difficulties even with Milton and Homer. 
Milton is too literary, and Homer too literal and 
historical. 

But I am not wise enough for a national criti- 
cism, and must use the old largeness a little 
longer, to discharge my errand from the muse to 
the poet concerning his art. 

Art is the path of the creator to his work. The 
paths, or methods, are ideal and eternal, though 
few men ever see them, not the artist himself for 
years, or for a lifetime, unless he come into the 
conditions. The painter, the sculptor, the com- 
poser, the epic rhapsodist, the orator, all partake 
one desire, namely, to express themselves sym- 
metrically and abundantly, not dwaifishl}^ and 
fragmentarily. They found or put themselves in 
certain conditions, as, the painter and sculptor 
before some impressive human figures ; the orator, 
into the assembly of the people ; and the others. 



THE POET. 37 

in such scenes as each has found exciting to his 
intellect ; and each presently feels the new desire. 
He hears a voice, he sees a beckoning. Then he 
is apprised, with wonder, what herds of demons 
hem him in. He can no more vest ; he says, with 
the old painter, " By God, it is in me, and must 
go forth of me." He pursues a beauty, half seen, 
which flies before him. The poet pours out verses 
in every solitude. Most of the things he says are 
conventional, no doubt ; but by and by he says 
something which is original and beautiful. That 
charms him. He would say nothing else but such 
things. In our way of talking, we say, 'That is 
yours, this is mine ; ' but the poet knows well that 
it is not his ; that it is as strange and beautiful to 
him as to you ; he would fain hear the like elo- 
quence at length. Once having tasted this im- 
mortal ichor, he cannot have enough of it, and, as 
an admirable creative power exists in these intel- 
lections, it is of the last importance that these 
things get spoken. What a little of all we know 
is said ! What drops of all the sea of our science 
are baled up ! and by what accident it is that tliese 
are exposed, when so many secrets sleep in nature I 
Hence the necessity of speech and song; hence 
these throbs and heart-beatings in the orator, at the 
door of the assembly, to the end, namely, that 
thought may be ejaculated as Logos, or Word. 

Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say, ' It is in 
me, and shall out.' Stand there, baulked and 
dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and 
hooted, stand and strive, until, at last, rage draw 



38 ESSAY I. 

out of thee that dream-i^owQV which every night 
shows thee is thine own ; a power transcending 
all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a 
man is the conductor of the whole river of elec- 
tricity. Nothing , walks, or creeps, or grows, or 
exists, which must not in turn arise and walk be- 
fore him as exponent of his meaning. Comes he 
to that power, his genius is no longer exhaustible. 
All the creatures, by pairs and by tribes, pour into 
his mind as into a Noah's ark, to come forth again 
to people a new world. This is lik;e the stock of 
air for our respiration, or for the combustion of 
our fireplace, not a measure of gallons, but the 
entire atmosphere if wanted. And therefore the 
rich poets, as Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and 
Raphael, have obviously no limits to their works, 
except the limits of their lifetime, and resemble a 
mirror carried through the street, ready to render 
an image of every created thing. 

O poet ! a new nobility is conferred in groves 
And pastures, and not in castles, or by the sword- 
blade, any longer. The conditions are hard, but 
equal. Thou shalt leave the world, and know the 
muse only. Thou shalt not know any longer the 
times, customs, graces, politics, or opinions of men, 
but. shalt take all from the muse. For the time of 
towns is tolled from the world by funeral chimes^ 
but in nature the universal houi's are counted by 
succeeding tribes of animals and plants, and by 
growth of joy on joy. God wills also that thou 
abdicate a manifold and duplex life, and that thou 
be content that others speak for thee. Others shall 



THE POET. 39 

be thy gentlemen, and shall represent all courtesy 
and worldly life for thee ; others shall do the great 
and resounding actions also. Thou shalt lie close 
hid with nature, and canst not be afforded to the 
Capitol or the Exchange. The world is full of 
renunciations and appenticeships, and this is thine i 
thou must pass for a fool and a churl for a long 
season. This is the screen and sheath in which 
Pan has protected his well-beloved flower, and 
thou shalt be known only to thine own, and they 
shall console thee with tenderest love. And thou 
shalt not be able to rehearse the names of thy 
friends in thy verse, for an old shame before the 
holy ideal. And this is the reward : that the 
ideal shall be real to thee, and the impressions of 
the actual world shall fall like summer rain, copi- 
ous, but not troublesome, to thy invulnerable 
essence. Thou shalt have the whole land for thy 
park and manor, the sea for thy bath and naviga- 
tion^ without tax and without envy ; the woods and 
tne rivers thou shalt own ; and thou shalt possess 
that wherein others are only tenants and boarders. 
Thou true land-lord ! sea-lord ! air-lord ! Wher- 
ever snow falls, or water flows, or birds fly, wher- 
ever day and night meet in twilight, wherever the 
blue heaven is hung by clouds, or sown with stars, 
wherever are forms with transparent boundaries, 
wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever 
is danger, and awe, and love, there is Beauty, plen- 
teous as rain, shed for thee, and though thou 
shouldest walk the world over, thou shalt not be 
^ble to find a <Jondition inopportune or ignoble. 



EXPERIENCE. 



The lords of life, the lords of life, 

I saw them pass, 

In their own guise, 

Like and unlike, 

Portly and grim. 

Use and Surprise, 

Surface and Dream, 

Succession swift, aud spectral Wrong, 

Temperament without a tongue, • 

And the inventor of the game 

Omnipresent without name ; — 

Some to see, some to be guessed. 

They marched from east to west: 

Little man, least of all, 

Among the legs of his guardians tall, 

Walked about with puzzled look: — 

Him by the hand dear nature took; 

Dearest nature, strong and kind, 

Whispered, " Darling, never mind! 

To-morrow they will wear another face. 

The founder thou ! these are thy race ! *' 



EXPERIENCE. 



Where do we find ourselves ? In a series of 
which we do not know the extremes, and believe that 
it has none. We wake and find ourselves on a stair ; 
there are stairs below us, which we seem to have 
ascended ; there are stairs above us, man}^ a one, 
which go upward and out of sight. But the 
Genius which, according to the old belief, stands 
at the door by which we enter, and gives us the 
lethe to drink, that we may tell no tales, mixed 
the cup too strongly, and we cannot shake off the 
lethargy now at noonday. Sleep lingers all our 
lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in 
the boughs of the fir-tree. AH things swim and 
glitter. Our life is not so much threatened as 
our perception. Ghost-like we glide through 
nature, and should not know our place again. 
Did our birth fall in some fit of indigence and 
frugality in nature, that she was so sparing of her 
fire and so liberal of her earth," that it appears to 
us that we lack the affirmative principle, and 
though we have health and reason, yet we have no 
superfluity of spirit for new creation ? We have 

(43) 



44 ESSA V 11. EXPERIENCE. 

enough to live and bring the year about, but not 
an ounce to impart or to invest. Ah that our 
Genius were a little more of a genius ! We are 
like millers on the lower levels of a stream, 
when the factories above them have exhausted the 
water. We too fancy that the unner people must 
have raised their d^tinb. 

If any of us knew what we were doing, or where 
we are going, then when we think we best know ! 
We do not know to-day whether we are busy or 
idle. In times when we thought ourselves indo- 
lent, we have afterwards discovered, that much 
was accomplished, and much was begun in us. 
All our days are so unprofitable while they pass, 
that 'tis wonderful where or when we ever got 
anything of this which we call wisdom, poetry, 
virtue. We never got it on any dated calendar 
day. Some heavenly days must have been inter- 
calated somewhere, like those that Hermes won 
with dice of the Moon, that Osiris might be 
born. It is said, all martyrdoms looked mean when 
they were suffered. Every ship is a romantic object, 
except that we sail in. Embark, and the romance 
quits our vessel, and hangs on every other sail in 
the horizon. Our life looks trivial, and we shun 
to record it. Men seem to have learned of the 
horizon the art of perpetual retreating and refer- 
ence. ' Yonder uplands are rich pasturage, and 
my neighbor has fertile meadow, but my field,' 
says the querulous farmer, ' only holds the world 
together.' I quote another man's saying ; unluck- 
ily, that other withdraws himself in the same way, 



^J^LUSION. 45 

and quotes me. '* 'Tis the trick of nature thus to de- 
grade to-day ; a good deal of buzz, and somewhere 
a result slipped magically in. Every roof is agree- 
able to the eye, until it is lifted ; then we find trag- 
edy and moaning women, and hard-eyed husbands, 
and deluges of lethe, and the men ask, ' What's 
- the news? ' as if the old were so bad. How many 
individuals can we count in society? how many 
actions? how many opinions? So much of our 
time is preparation, so much is routine, and so much 
retrospect, that the pith of each man's genius con- 
tracts itself to a very few hours. The history of 
literature — take the net result of Tiraboschi, War- 
ton, or Schlegel, — is a sum of very few ideas, and of 
very few original tales, — all the rest being variation 
of these. So in this great society wide lying around 
us, a critical analysis would find very few spon- 
taneous actions. It is almost all custom and gross 
sense. There are even few opinions, and these seem 
organic in the speakers, and do not disturb the 
universal necessity. 

What opium is instilled into all disaster ! It 
shows formidable as we approach it, but there is at 
last no rough rasping friction, but the most slip- 
pery sliding surfaces. We fall soft on a thought. 
Ate Dea is gentle, 

"Over men's heads walking aloft, 
With tender feet treading so soft." 

People grieve and bemoan themselves, but it is 
not half so bad with them as they say. There are 
moods in which we court suffering, in the hope 



46 ESS A Y 11. EXPERIENCR. 

that here, at least, we shall find reality, sharp 
peaks and edges of truth. But it turns out to be 
scene -painting and counterfeit. The onl}^ thing 
grief has taught me, is to know how shallow it is. 
That, like all the rest, plays about the surface, and 
never introduces me into the reality, for contact 
with which, we would eren pay the costly price 
of sons and lovers. Was it Boscovich who found 
out that bodies never come in contact? Well, 
souls never touch their objects. An innavigable 
sea washes with silent waves between us and the 
things we aim at and converse with. Grief too 
will make us idealists. In the death of my son, 
now more than two years ago, I seem to have lost 
a beautiful estate, — no more. I cannot get it 
nearer to me. If to-morrow I should be informed 
of the bankruptcy of my principal debtors, the loss 
of my property would be a great inconvenience to 
me, perhaps, for many years ; but it would leave 
me as it found me, — neither better nor worse. So 
is it with this calamity : it does not touch me : 
something which I fancied was a part of me, which 
could not be torn away without tearing me, nor 
enlarged without enriching me, falls off from me, 
and leaves no scar. It was caducous. I grieve 
that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one 
step into real nature. The Indian who was laid 
under a curse, that the wind should not blow on 
him, nor water flow to him, nor fire burn him, is a 
type of us all. The dearest events are summer- 
rain, and we the Para coats that shed every drop. 
Nothing is left us now but death. We look to 



TEMPERAMENT, 47 

that with a grim satisfaction, saying, there at least 
is reality that will not dodge ns. 

I take this evanescence and lubricity of all ob- 
jects, which lets them slip through our fingers 
then when we clutch hardest, to be the most un- 
handsome part of our condition. Nature does not 
like to be observed, and likes that we should be 
her fools and playmates. We may have the sphere 
for our cricket-ball, but not a berry for our philos- 
ophy. Direct strokes she never gave us power to 
make ; all our blows glance, all our hits are acci- 
dents. Our relations to each other are oblique 
and casual. 

Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no 
end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a 
string of beads, and as we pass through them, 
they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint 
the world their own hue, and each shows only 
what lies in its focus. From the mountain you 
see the mountain. We animate Vrhat we can, 
and we see only what we animate. Nature and 
books belong to the eyes that see them. It de- 
pends on the mood of the man, whether he shall 
see the sunset or the fine poem. There are always 
sunsets, and there is always genius ; but only a 
few hours so serene that we can relish nature or 
criticism. The more or less depends on structure 
or temperament. Temperament is the iron wire 
on which the beads are strung. Of what use is 
fortune or talent to a cold and defective nature ? 
Who cares what sensibility or discrimination a 



48 ESSA V II. EXPERIENCE. 

man has at some time shown, if he falls asleep in 
his chair ? or if he laugh and giggle ? or if he apol- 
ogize ? or is affected with egotism ? or thinks of 
his dollar? or cannot go by food ? or has gotten a 
child in his boyhood ? Of what use is genius, if 
the organ is too convex or too concave, and can- 
not find a focal distance within the actual horizon 
of human life ? Of what use, if the brain is too 
cold or too hot, and the man does not care enough 
for results, to stimulate him to experiment, and 
hold him up in it? or if the web is too finely 
woven, too irritable by pleasure and pain, so that 
life stagnates from too much reception, without 
due outlet? Of what use to make heroic vows of 
amendment, if the same old law-breaker is to keep 
them ? What cheer can the religious sentiment 
yield, when that is suspected to be secretly de- 
pendent on the seasons of the year, and the state 
of the blood ? I knew a witty physician who 
found theology in the biliary duct, and used to 
affirm that if there was disease in the liver, the 
man became a Calvinist, and if that organ was 
sound, he became a Unitarian. Very mortifying 
is the reluctant experience that some unfriendly 
excess or imbecility neutralizes the promise of 
genius. We see young men who owe us a new 
world, so readily and lavishly they promise, but 
they never acquit the debt ; they die young and 
dodge the account : or if they live, they lose them- 
selves in the crowd. 

Temperament also enters fully into the system 
of illusions, and shuts us in a prison of glass 



TEMPERAMENT. 49 

which we cannot see. There is an optical illusion 
about every person we meet. In truth, they are 
all creatures of given temperament, which will ap- 
pear in a given character, whose boundaries thej" 
will never pass : but we look at them, the}^ seem 
alive, and we presume there is impulse in them» 
In the moment it seems impulse ; in the year, in 
the lifetime, it turns out to be a certain uniform'' 
tune which the revolving barrel of the music-box 
must play. Men resist the conclusion in the morn- 
ing, but adopt it as the evening wears on, that 
temper prevails over everything of time, place, 
and condition, and is inconsumable in the flames 
of religion. Some modifications the moral senti- 
ment avails to impose, but the individual texture 
holds its dominion, if not to bias the moral judg- 
ments, yet to fix the measure of activity and of 
enjoyment. 

I thus express the law as it is read from the 
platform of ordinary life, but must not leave it 
without noticing the capital exception. For tem- 
perament is a power which no man willingly hears 
any one praise but himself. On the platform of 
physics, we cannot resist the contracting influ- 
ences of so-called science. Temperament puts all 
divinity to rout. I know the mental proclivity of 
physicians. I hear the chuckle of the phrenolo- 
gists. Theoretic kidnappers and slave-drivers, 
they esteem each man the victim of another, who 
winds hira round his finger b}^ knowing the law 
of his being, and by such cheap signboards as the 
color of his beard, or the slope of his occiput, 
25 



50 ESSA V II. EXPERIENCE, 

reads the inventory of his fortunes and character. 
The grossest ignorance does not disgust like this 
impudent knowingness. The physicians say, they 
are not materialists ; but they are : — Spirit is mat- 
ter reduced to an extreme thinness: O so thin ! — 
But the definition of spiritual should be, that which 
is its own evidence. What notions do they attach 
to love ! what to religion ! One would not wil- 
lingly pronounce these words in their hearing, and 
give them the occasion to profane them. I saw a 
gracious gentleman who adapts his conversation 
to the form of the head of the man he talks with ! 
I had fancied that the value of life lay in its in- 
scrutable possibilities ; in the fact that T never 
know, in addressing myself to a new individual, 
what may befall me. I carry the keys of my cas- 
tle in my hand, ready to throw them at the feet 
of my lord, whenever and in what disguise soever 
he shall appear. I know he is in the neighbor- 
hood hidden among vagabonds. Shall I preclude 
my future, by taking a high seat, and kindly 
adapting my conversation to the shape of heads? 
When I come to that, the doctors shall buy me 
for a cent. ' But, sir, medical history ; the re- 
port to the Institute ; the proven facts ! ' — I 
distrust the facts and the inferences. Tempera- 
ment is the veto or limitation-power in the consti- 
tution, very justly applied to restrain an opposite 
excess in the constitution, but absurdly offered as 
a bar to original equity. When virtue is in pres- 
ence, all subordinate powers sleep. On its own 
level, or in view of nature, temperament is final. 



SUCCESSION. 51 

I see not, if* one be once caught in this trap of 
so-called sciences, any escape for the man from 
the links of the chain of physical necessity. Given 
such an embryo, such a history must follow. On 
this platform, one lives in a sty of sensualism, and 
would soon come to suicide. But it is impossible 
that the creative power should exclude itselfc 
Into every intelligence there is a door which is 
never closed, through which the creator passes. 
The intellect, seeker of absolute truth, or the 
heart, lover of absolute good, intervenes for our 
succor, and at one whisper of these high powers, 
we awake from ineffectual struggles with this 
nightmare. We hurl it into its own hell, and can- 
not again contract ourselves to so base a state. 

The secret of the illusoriness is in the necessity 
of a succession of moods or objects. Gladly we 
would anchor, but the anchorage is quicksand. 
This onward trick of nature is too strong for us: 
Pero si muove. When, at night, I look at the 
moon and stars, I seem stationary, and they to 
hurry. Our love of the real draws us to perma- 
nence, but health of body consists in circulation, 
and sanity of mind in variety or facility of asso- 
ciation. We need change of objects. Dedication 
to one thought is quickly odious. We house with 
the insane, and must humor them \ then conver- 
sation dies out. Once I took such delight in Mon- 
taigne, that I thought I should not need any other 
book ; before that, in Shakespeare ; then in Plu- 
tarch; then in Plotinus; at one time in Bacon; 



52 ESSAY 11. EXPERIENCE. 

afterwards in Goethe ; even in Bettine ; but now I 
turn the pages of either of them languidh% whilst 
I still cherish their genius, So with pictures ; 
each will bear an emphasis of attention once, 
which it cannot retain, though we fain would con- 
tinue to be pleased in that manner. How strongly 
I have felt of pictures, that when you have seen 
one well, you must take your leave of it; you 
shall never see it again. I have had good lessons 
from pictures, which I have since seen without 
emotion or remark. A deduction must be made 
from the opinion, which even the wise express of 
a new book or occurrence. Their opinion gives 
me tidings of their mood, and some vague guess 
at the new fact, but is nowise to be trusted as the 
lasting relation between that intellect and that 
thing. The child asks, * Mamma, why don't I 
like the stor}^ as well as when you told it me yes- 
terday?' Alas, child, it is even so with the old- 
est cherubim of knowledge. But will it answer 
thy question to say. Because thou wert born to a 
whole, and this story is a particular ? The reason 
of the pain this discovery causes us (and we make 
it late in respect to works of art and intellect), is 
the plaint of tragedy which murmurs from it in 
regard to persons, to friendship and love. 

That immobility and absence of elasticity which 
we find in the arts, we find with more pain in the 
artist. There is no power of expansion in men. 
Our friends early appear to us as representatives 
of certain ideas, which they never pass or exceed. 
They stand on the brink of the ocean of thought 



SUCCESSION. 53 

and power, but they never take the single step 
that would bring them there. A man is like a 
bit of Labrador spar, which has no lustre as you 
turn ill in your hand, until you come to a particu- 
lar angle ; then it shows deep and beautiful 
colors. There is no adaptation or universal appli- 
cability in men, but each has his special talent, 
and the mastery of successful men consists in 
adroitly keeping themselves where and when that 
turn shall be oftenest to be practiced. We do 
what we must, and call it by the best names we 
can, and would fcin have the praise of having in- 
tended the result which ensues. I cannot recall 
any form of man who is not superfluous sometimes. 
But is not this pitiful? Life is not worth the tak- 
ing, to do tricks in. 

Of course, it needs the whole society, to give 
the symmetry we seek. The parti-colored wheel 
must revolve very fast to appear white. Some- 
thing is learned too by conversing with so much 
folly and defect. In fine, whoever loses, we are 
always of the gaining party. Divinity is behind our 
failures and follies also. The plays of children 
are nonsense, but very educative nonsense. So it 
is with the largest and solemnest things, with 
commerce, government, church, marriage, and so 
with the history of every man's bread, and the 
ways by which he is to come by it. Like a. bird 
which alights nowhere, but hops perpetually from 
bough to bough, is the Power which abides in no 
man and in no woman, but for a moment speaks 



54 ESSAY II. EXPERIENCE. 

from this one, and for another moment from that 
one. 

But what help from these fineries or pedan- 
tries ? What help from thought ? Life is not dia- 
lectics. We, I think, in these times, have . had 
lessons enough of the futility of criticism. Our 
young people have thought and written much on 
labor and reform, and for all that they have writ* 
ten, neither the world nor themselves have got 
on a step. Intellectual tasting of life will not 
supersede muscular activity. If a man should 
consider the nicety of the passage of a piece of 
bread down his throat, he would starve. At Ed- 
ucation-Farm, the noblest theor}^ of life sat on 
the noblest figures of young men and maidens, 
quite powerless and melancholy. It would not 
rake or pitch a ton of hay : it would not rub 
down a horse ; and the men and maidens it left 
pale and hungry. A political orator wittily com- 
pared our party promises to western roads, which 
opened stately enough, with planted trees on 
either side, to tempt the traveller, but soon became 
narrow and narrower, and ended in a squirrel- 
track, and ran up a tree. So does culture with 
us; it ends in head-ache. Unspeakably sad and 
barren does life look to those, who a few months 
ago were dazzled with the splendor of the promise 
of the times. '^ There is now no longer any 
right course of action, nor any self-devotion left 
among the Iranis." Objections and criticism we 
have had our fill of. There are objections to every 



SURFACE. 55 

course of life and action, and the practical wis- 
dom infers an indifferency, from the omnipresence 
of objection. The whole frame of things 
preaches indifferency. Do not craze yourself 
with thinking, but go about your business any- 
where. Life is not intellectual or critical, but 
sturdy. Its chief good is for well-mixed people 
who can enjoy what they find, without question. 
Nature hates peeping, and our mothers speak her 
very sense when they say, " Children, eat your 
victuals, and say no more of it." To fill the hour, 
— that is happiness; to fill the hour and leave no 
crevice for a repentance or an approval. We live 
amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate 
well on them. Under the oldest mouldiest conven- 
tions, a man of native force prospers just as well as 
in the newest world, and that by skill of handling 
and treatment. He can take hold anywhere. Life 
itself is a mixture of power and form, and will not 
bear the least excess of either. To finish the moment, 
to find the journey's end in every step of the road, 
to live the greatest number of good hours, is wis- 
dom. It is not the part of men, but of fanatics, 
or of mathematicians, if you will, to say, that, the 
shortness of life considered, it is not worth caring 
whether for so short a duration we were sprawling 
in want, or sitting high. Since our office is with 
moments, let us husband them. Five minutes of 
to-day are worth as much to me as five minutes 
in the next millennium. Let us be poised, and 
wise, and our own, to-day. Let us treat the men 
and women well : treat them as if they were real : 



56 ESSAY II. EXPERIENCE. 

perhaps they are. Men live in their fancy, like 
drunkards whose hands are too soft and tremu- 
lous for successful labor. It is a tempest of fan- 
cies, and the only ballast I know is a respect to 
the present hour. Without any shadow of doubt, 
amidst this vertigo of shows and politics, I settle 
myself ever the firmer in the creed, that we should 
not postpone and refer and wish, but do broad 
justice where we are, by whomsoever we deal 
with, accepting our actual companions and circum- 
stances, however humble or odious, as the mystic 
officials to whom the universe has delegated its 
whole pleasure for us. If these are mean and 
malignant, their contentment, which is the last 
victory of justice, is a more satisfying echo to the 
heart than the voice of poets and the casual sym- 
pathy of admirable persons. I think that how- 
ever a thoughtful man may suffer from the defects 
and absurdities of his company, he cannot without 
affectation deny to any set of men and women 
a sensibility to extraordinar}^ merit. The coarse 
and frivolous have an instinct of superiority, if 
they have not a sympathy, and honor it in their 
blind capricious way with sincere homage. 

The fine young people despise life, but in me, 
and in such as with me are free from dyspepsia, 
and to whom a day is a sound and solid good, 
it is a great excess of politeness to look scorn- 
ful and to cry for company. I am grown by 
sympathy a little eager and sentimental, but 
leave me alone, and I should relish every hour 
and what it brought me, the potluck of the day. 



SURFACE. 57 

as heartily as the oldest gossip in the bar-room. I 
am thankful for small mercies. I compared notes 
with one of my friends who expects everything 
of the universe, and is disappointed when any- 
thing is less than the best, and I found that I 
begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and 
am always full of thanks for moderate goods. I 
accept the clangor and jangle of contrary tenden- 
cies. I find my account in sots and bores also. 
They give a reality to the circumjacent picture, 
which such a vanishing meteorous appearance can 
ill spare. In the morning I awake, and find the 
old world, wife, babes, and mother, Concord and 
Boston, the dear old spiritual world, and even the 
dear old devil not far off. If we will take the 
good we find, asking no questions, we shall have 
heaping measures. The great gifts are not got 
by analysis. Everything good is on the highway. 
The middle region of our being is the temperate 
zone. We may climb into the thin and cold 
realm of pure geometry and lifeless science, or 
sink into that of sensation. Between these ex- 
tremes is the equator of life, of thought, of spirit, 
of poetry, — a narrow belt. Moreover, in popular 
experience, everything good is on the highway. 
A collector peeps into all the picture -shops of 
Europe for a landscape of Poussin, a crayon- 
sketch of Salvator ; but the Transfiguration, the 
Last Judgment, the Communion of St. Jerome, and 
what are as transcendent as these, are on the 
walls of the Vatican, the Uffizi, or the Louvre, 
where every footman may see them ; to say noth- 



58 ESSAY II. EXPERIENCE. 

ing of nature's pictures in every street, of sunsets 
and sunrises every day, and the sculpture of the 
human body never absent. A collector recently 
bought at public auction, in London, for one 
hundred and fifty-seven guineas, an autograph of 
Shakespeare : but for nothing a school-boy can 
read Hamlet, and can detect secrets of highest 
concernment yet unpublished therein. I think I 
will never read any but the commonest books, — 
the Bible, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton. 
Then viQ are impatient of so public a life and 
planet, and run hither and thither for nooks and 
secrets. The imagination delights in the wood- 
craft of Indians, trappers, and bee-hunters. We 
fancy that we are strangers, and not so intimately 
domesticated iri the planet as the Avild man, and 
the wild beast and bird. But the exclusion 
reaches them also ; reaches the climbing, flying, 
gliding, feathered and four-footed man. Fox and 
woodchuck, hawk and snipe, and bittern, when 
nearly seen, have no more root in the deep world 
than man, and are just such superficial tenants of 
the globe. Then the new molecular philosophy 
shows astronomical interspaces betwixt atom and 
atom, shows that the world is all outside : it has 
no inside. 

The mid-world is best. Nature, as we know 
her, is no saint. The lights of the church, the 
ascetics, Gentoos and Grahamites, she does not 
distinguish by any favor. She comes eating and 
drinking and sinning. Her darlings, the great, 
the strong, the beautiful, are not children of our 



SURFACE. 59 

law, do not come out of the Sunday School, nor 
weigh their food, nor punctually keep the conv 
mandments. If we will be strong with her 
strength, we must not harbor such disconsolate con- 
sciences, borrowed too from the consciences of other 
nations. We must set up the strong present tense 
against all the rumors of wrath, past or to come, 
So many things are unsettled which it is of the 
first importance to settle, — and, pending their set- 
tlement, we will do as we do. Whilst the debate 
goes forward on the equity of commerce, and will 
not be closed for a century or two. New and Old 
England may keep shop. Law of copyright and 
international copyright is to be discussed, and, in 
the interim, we will sell our books for the most 
we can. Expediency of literature, reason of lit- 
erature, lawfulness of writing down a thought, is 
questioned ; much is to say on both sides, and, 
while the fight waxes hot, thou, dearest scholar, 
stick to thy foolish task, add a line every hour, 
and between whiles add a line. Right to 
hold land, right of property, is disputed, and the 
conventions convene, and before the vote is taken, . 
dig away in your garden, and spend your earn- 
ings as a waif or godsend to all serene and 
beautiful purposes. Life itself is a bubble and a - 
skepticism, and a sleep within a sleep. Grant it, 
and as much more as they will, — but thou, God's 
darling ! heed thy private dream : thou wilt not 
be missed in the scorning and skepticism : there 
are enough of them : stay there in thy closet, and 
toil, until the rest are agreed Avhat to do about it. 



6o ESS A Y 11. EXPERIENCE. 

Thy sickness, they say, and thy puny habit, re- 
quire that thou do this or avoid that, but know 
that thy life is a flitting state, a tent for a night, 
and do thou, sick or well, finish that stint. Thou 
art sick, but shalt not be worse, and the universe, 
which holds thee dear, shall be the better. 

Human life is made up of the two elements, 
power, and form, and the proportion must be in 
variably kept, if we would have it sweet and 
sound. Each of these elements in excess makes 
a mischief as hurtful as its defect. Everything 
runs to excess : every good quality is noxious, if 
unmixed, and, to carry the danger to the edge of 
ruin, nature causes each man's peculiarity to sup- 
erabound. Here, among the farms, we adduce the 
scholars as examples of this treachery. They are 
nature's victims of expression. You who see the 
artist, the orator, the poet, too near, and find their 
life no more excellent than that of mechanics or 
farmers, and themselves victims of partiality, very 
hollow and haggard, and pronounce them failures, 
— not heroes, but quacks,— conclude very reason- 
ably, that these arts are not for man, but are 
disease. Yet nature will not bear you out. Ir- 
resistible nature made men such, and makes 
legions more of such, every day. You love the 
boy reading in a book, gazing at a drawing, or a 
cast : yet what are these millions who read and 
behold, but incipient writers and sculptors? Adda 
little more of that quality which now reads and 
sees, and they will seize the pen and chisel. And 
if one remembers how innocently he began to be 



SURPRISE. 6 1 

an artist, he perceives that nature joined with his 
enemy. A man is a golden impossibility. The 
line he must walk is a hair's breadth. The wise 
through excess of wisdom is made a fool. 

How easily, if fate would suffer it, we might 
keep forever these beautiful limits, and adjust our-, 
selves, once for all, to the perfect calculation of 
the kingdom of known cause and effect. In the 
street and in the newspapers, life appears so plain 
a business, that manly resolution and adherence to 
the multiplication-table through all weathers will 
insure success. But ah ! presently comes a day, 
or is it only a half-hour, with its angel -whispering, 
— which discomfits the conclusions of nations and 
of years I To-morrow again, everything looks real 
and angular, the habitual standards are reinstated, 
common sense is as rare as genius, — is the basis 
of genius, and experience is hands and feet to 
every enterprise ; — and yet, he who should do his 
business on this understanding would be quickly 
bankrupt. Power keeps quite another I'oad than 
the turnpikes of choice and will, namel}^ the sub- 
terranean and invisible tunnels and channels of 
life. It is ridiculous that we are diplomatists, and 
doctors, and considerate people : there are no 
dupes like these. Life is a series of surprises, and 
would not be worth taking or keeping, if it were 
not. God delights to isolate us every day, and 
hide from us the past and the future. We would 
look about us^ but with grand politeness he draws 
down before us an impenetrable screen of purest 



62 ESSAY 11. EXPERIENCE. 

sky, and another behind us of purest sky. ' You 
will not remember,' he seems to say, ' and you will 
not expect.' All good conversation, manners, and 
action, come from a spontaneity which forgets 
usages, and makes the moment great. Nature 
hates calculators ; her methods are saltatory and 
impulsive. Man lives by pulses ; our organic 
movements are such; and the chemical and 
ethereal agents are undulatory and alternate ; and 
the mind goes antagonizing on, and never prospers 
but by fits. We thrive by casualties. Our chief 
experiences have been casual. The most attrac- 
tive class of people are those who are powerful 
obliquely, and not b}^ the direct stroke : men of 
r^enius, but not yet accredited : one gets the cheer of 
vheir light, without paying too great a tax. Theirs 
is the beauty of the bird, or the morning light, 
and not of art. In the thought of genius there is 
always a surprise ; and the moral sentiment is well 
called " the newness," for it is never other ; as 
new to the oldest intelligence as to the young 
child, — " the kingdom that cometh without ob- 
servation." In like manner, for practical success, 
there must not be too much design. A man will 
not be observed in doing that which he can do 
best. There is a certain magic about his proper- 
3st action, which stupefies your powers of obser<= 
/ation, so that though it is done before you, you 
wist not of it. The art of life has a pudency, and 
will not be exposed. Every man is an impos- 
5iibilitv, until he is born ; everything impossible, 
until we see a success. The ardors of piety agree 



REALITY. 63 

at last with the coldest skepticism, — that nothing 
is of us or our works, — that all is of God. Nature 
will not spare us the smallest leaf of laurel. All 
writing comes by the grace of God, and all doing 
and having. I would gladly be moral, and keep 
due metes r.nd bounds, which I dearly love, and 
allow the most to the will of man, but I have set my 
heart on honesty in this chapter, and I can see noth- 
ing at last, in success or failure, than more or less of 
vital force supplied from the Eternal. The results of 
life are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years 
teach much which the days never know. The per- 
sons who compose our company, converse, and come 
and go, and design and execute many things, and 
somewhat comes of it all, but an unlooked-for re- 
sult. The individual is always mistaken. He 
designed many things, and drew in other persons 
as coadjutors, quarrelled with some or all, blun- 
dered much, and something is done ; all are a 
little advanced, but the individual is always mis- 
taken. It turns out somewhat new, and very 
unlike what he promised himself. 

The ancients, struck with this irreducibleness of 
the elements of human life to calculation, exalted 
Chance into a divinity, but that is to stay too 
long at the spark, — which glitters truly at one 
point, — ^but the universe is warm with the lat- 
ency of the same fire. The miracle of life which 
will not be expounded, but will remain a mira- 
cle, introduces a new element. In the growth 
of the embryo. Sir Everard Home, I think, no- 



64 ESS A V II. EXPERIENCE, 

ticed that the evolution was not from one central 
point, but co-active from three or more points. 
Life has no memory. That which proceeds in 
succession might be remembered, but that which 
is co-existent, or ejaculated from a deeper cause, 
as yet far from being conscious, knows not its 
own tendency. So it is with us, now, skeptical, - 
or without unity, because immersed in forms and 
effects all seeming to be of equal yet hostile 
value, and now religious, whilst in the reception 
of spiritual law. Bear with these distractions, 
with this coetaneous growth of the parts : they 
will one day be members^ and obey one will. On 
that one will, on that secret cause, they nail our 
attention and hope. Life is hereby melted into 
an expectation or a religion. Underneath the 
inharmonious and trivial particulars is a musical 
perfection, the Ideal journeying always with us, 
the heaven without rent or seam. Do but observe 
the mode of our illumination. When I converse 
with a profound mind, or if at any time being 
alone I have good thoughts, I do not at once 
arrive at satisfactions, as when, being thirsty, I 
drink water, or go to the fire, being cold : no ! 
but I am at first apprised of my vicinity to a 
new and excellent region of life. By persisting 
to read or to think, this region gives further sign 
of itself, as it were in flashes of light, in sudden 
discoveries of its profound beauty and repose, as 
if the clouds that covered it parted at intervals, 
and showed the approaching traveler the inland 
mountains, with the tranquil eternal meadows 



REALITY. 65 

spread at their base, whereon flocks graze, and 
shepherds pipe and dance. But every insight from 
this realm of thought is felt as initial, and prom- 
ises a sequel. I do not make it ; I arrive there, 
and behold what was there already. I make ! O 
no ! I clap my hands in infantine joy and amaze- 
ment, before the first opening to me of this august 
magnificence, old with the love and homage of in- 
numerable ages, young with the life of life, the sun- 
bright Mecca of the desert. And what a future it 
opens ! I feel a new heart beating with the love 
of the new beauty. I am ready to die out of na- 
ture, and be born again into this new yet unap- 
proachable America I have found in the West. 

** Since neither now nor yesterday began 
These thoughts, which have been ever, nor yet can 
A man be found who their first entrance knew.'* 

If I have described life as a flux of moods, I must 
now add, that there is that in us which changes 
not, and which ranks all sensations and states of 
mind. The consciousness in each man is a sliding 
scale, which identifies him now with the First 
Cause, and now with the flesh of his body ; life 
above life, in infinite degrees. The sentiment 
from which it sprung determines the dignity of 
any deed, and the question ever is, not what you 
have done or forborne, but, at whose command 
you have done or forborne it. 

Fortune, Minerva, Muse, Holy Ghost, — these 
are quaint names, too narrow to cover this un- 
bounded substance. The baffled intellect must 
C 



66 ESS A V II. EXPERIENCE. 

still kneel before this cause, which refuses to be 
named, — ineffable cause, which every fine genias 
has essayed to represent by some emphatic sym- 
bol, as, Thales by water, Anaximenes by air, 
Anaxagoras by (^Nou^) thought, Zoroaster by fire, 
Jesus and the moderns by love : and the metaphor 
of each has become a national religion. The Chi» 
nese Meueius has not been the least successful in 
his generalization. " I fully understand language," 
he said, ''and nourish well my vast-flowing 
vigor." — "I beg to ask what you call vast-flowing 
vigor ?''^ — said his companion. '* The explana- 
tion," replied Mencius, " is difficult. This vigoi 
is supremely great, and in the highest degree un- 
bending. Nourish it correctly, and do it no injury, 
and it will fill up the vacancy between heaven 
and earth. This vigor accords with and assists 
justice and reason, and leaves no hunger." — In 
our more correct writing, we give to this generali- 
zation the name of Being, and thereby confess 
that we have arrived as far as we can go. Suffice 
it for the joy of the universe, that w^e have not 
arrived at a wall, but at interminable oceans. Our 
life seems not present, so much as prospective ; 
not for the affairs on which it is wasted, but as a 
hint of this vast-flowing vigor. Most of life seems 
to be mere advertisement of faculty : information 
is given us not to sell ourselves cheap ; that we 
are very great. So, in particulars, our greatness 
is always in a tendency or direction, not in an ac- 
tion. It is for us to believe in the rule, not in the 
exception. The noble are thus known from the 



REALITY. 67 

ignoble. So in accepting tlie leading of the sen- 
timents, it is not what we believe concerning the 
immortality of the soul, or the like, but the uni- 
versal impulse to believe^ that is the material cir- 
cumstance, and is the principal fact in the history 
of the globe. Shall we describe this cause as that 
which works directly ^ The spirit is not helpless 
or needful of mediate organs. It has plentiful 
powers and direct effects. I am explained with- 
out explaining, I am felt without acting, and where 
I am not. Therefore all just persons are satisfied 
with their own praise. They refuse to explain 
themselves, and are content that new actions 
should do them that office. They believe that we 
communicate without speech, and above speech, 
and that no right action of ours is quite unaffect- 
ing to our friends, at whatever distance ; for the 
influence of action is not to be measured by 
miles. Why should i fret myself, because a cir- 
cumstance has occurred which hinders my pres- 
ence where I was expected? If I am not at 
the meeting, my presence where I am should 
be as useful to the commonwealth of friend- 
ship and wisdom, as would be my presence 
in that place. I exert the same quality of 
power in all places. Thus journeys the mighty 
Ideal before us ; it never was known to fall into 
the rear. No man ever came to an experience 
which was satiating, but his good is tidings of a 
better. Onward and onward ! In liberated mo- 
ments, we know that a new picture of life and 
duty is already possible ; the elements already ex- 



6S ESSAY II. EXPERIENCE. 

ist in many minds around you, of a doctrine of 
life which shall transcend any written record we 
have. The new statement will comprise the 
skepticisms, as well as the faiths of a society, and 
out of unbeliefs a creed shall be formed. For, 
skepticisms are not gratuitous or lawless, but are 
limitations of the affirmative statement, and the 
new philosophy must take them in, and make af- 
firmations outside of them, just as much as it must 
include the oldest beliefs. 

It is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, 
the discovery we have made, that we exist. That 
discovery is called the Fall of Man. Ever after- 
wards, we suspect our instruments. We have 
learned that we do not see directly, but mediately, 
and that we have no means of correcting these 
oolored and distorted lenses which we are, or of 
computing the amount of their errors. Perhaps 
these subject-lenses have a creative power; per- 
haps there are no objects. Once we lived in what 
we saw ; now, the rapaciousness of this new power, 
which threatens to absorb all things, engages us. 
Nature, art, persons, letters, religions, — objects, 
successively tumble in, and God is but one of its 
ideas. Nature and literature are subjective phe- 
nomena ; every evil and every good thing is a 
shadow which we cast. The street is full of hu- 
miliations to the proud. As the fop contrived to 
dress his bailiffs in his livery, and make them wait 
On his guests at table, so the chagrins which the 
bad heart gives off as bubbles, at once take form 



SUBJECT OR THE ONE. 69 

as ladies and gentlemen in the street, shopmen 
or barkeepers in hotels, and threaten or insult 
whatever is threatenable and insultable in us. 
'Tis the same with our idolatries. People forget 
that it is the eye which makes the horizon, and 
the rounding mind's eye which makes this or that^ 
man a type or representative of humanity with 
the name of hero or saint. Jesus, the "providen- 
tial man," is a good man on whom many people 
are agreed that these optical laws shall take ef- 
fect. By love on one part, and by forbearance to 
press objection on the other part, it is for a time 
settled, that we will look at him in the centre of 
the horizon, and ascribe to him the properties 
that will attach to any man so seen. But the 
longest love or aversion has a speedy term. The 
great and crescive self, rooted in absolute nature^ 
supplants all relative existence, and ruins the 
kingdom of mortal friendship and love. Marriage 
(in what is called the spiritual world) is impossi- 
ble, because of the inequality between every 
subject and every object. The subject is the re- 
ceiver of Godhead, and at every comparison must 
feel his being enhanced by that cryptic might.. 
Though not in energy, yet by presence, this mag- 
azine of substance cannot be otherwise than felt r 
nor can any force of intellect attribute to the ob-- 
ject the proper deity which sleeps or wakes for- 
ever in every subject. Never can love make 
consciousness and ascription equal in force. There 
will be the same gulf between every me and thee, 
as between the original and the picture. The 



70 ESS A y II. EXPERIENCE. 

universe is the bride of the soul. All private 
sympath}^ is partial. Two human beings are like 
globes, which can touch only in a point, and, 
whilst they remain in contact, all other points of 
each of the spheres are inert ; their turn must 
also come, and the longer a particular union lasts, 
the more energy of appetency the parts not in 
union acquire. 

Life will be imaged, but cannot be divided nor 
doubled. Any invasion of its unit}' would be 
chaos. The soul is not twin-born, but the only 
begotten, and though revealing itself as child in 
time, child in appearance, is of a fatal and uni- 
versal power, admitting no co-life. Every day, 
every act betrays the ill-concealed deity. We be- 
lieve in ourselves, as we do not believe in others. 
We permit all things to ourselves, and that which 
we call sin in others, is experiment for us. It is 
an instance of our faith in ourselves, that men 
never speak of crime as lightly as they think ; or, 
every man thinks a latitude safe for himself, 
which is nowise to be indulged to another. The 
act looks very differently on the inside, and on 
the outside ; in its quality, and in its conse- 
quences. Murder in the murderer is no such 
ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have 
it; it does not unsettle him, or fright him from 
his ordinary notice of trifles: it is an act quite 
easy to be contemplated, but in its sequel, it turns 
out to be a horrible jangle and confounding of all 
relations. Especially the crimes that spring from 
love, seem right and fair from the actor's point of 



SUBJECT OR THE ONE. 7 1 

view, but, when acted, are found destructive of 
society. No man at least believes that he can be 
lost, nor that the crime in him is as black as in 
the felon, because the intellect qualifies in our 
own case the moral judgments. For there is no 
crime to the intellect. That is antinoraian or 
hypernomian, and judges law as well as fact. '' It 
is worse than a crime, it is a blunder," said Na- 
poleon, speaking the language of the intellect. 
To it, the world is a problem in mathematics or 
the science of quantity, and it leaves out praise 
and blame, and all weak emotions. All stealing 
is comparative. If you come to absolutes, pray 
who does not steal? Saints are sad, because they 
behold sin (even when they speculate) from the 
point of view of the conscience, and not of the 
intellect ; a confusion of thought. Sin seen from 
the thought, is a diminution or leBS ; seen from 
the conscience or will, it is pravity or had. The 
intellect names it shade, absence of light, and no 
essence. The conscience must feel it as essence, 
essential evil. This it is not ; it has an objective 
existence, but no subjective. 

Thus inevitably does the universe wear our 
color, and every object fall successively into the 
subject itself. The subject exists, the subject en- 
larges ; all things sooner or later fall into place. 
As I am, so I see ; use what language we will, we 
can never say anything but what we are ; Hermes, 
Cadmus, Columbus, Newton, Buonaparte, are the 
mind's ministers. Instead of feeling a poverty 
when we encounter a great man, let us treat the 



72 ESSA V IL EXPERIENCE. 

new comer like a traveling geologist, who pas»..vS 
through our estate, and shows us good slate, or 
limestone, or anthracite, in our brush pasture. 
The partial action of each strong mind in one di- 
rection, is a telescope for the objects on which it 
is pointed. But every other part of knowledge is 
to be pushed to the same extravagance, ere the 
soul attains her due sphericity. Do you see that 
•■kitten chasiug so prettily her own tail? If you 
could look with her eyes, you might see her sur- 
rounded with hundreds of figures performing 
complex dramas, with tragic and comic issues, 
long conversations, many characters, many ups 
and downs of fate^ — and meantime it is only puss 
and her tail. How long before our masquerade 
will end its noise of tambourines, laughter, and 
shouting, and we shall find it was a solitary per- 
formance ? — A subject and an object, — it takes 
so much to make the galvanic circuit complete, 
but magnitude adds nothing. What imports it 
whether it is Kepler and the sphere ; Columbus 
and America; a reader and his book; or puss 
with her tail ? 

It is true that all the muses and love and relig- 
ion hate these developments, and will find a way 
to punish the chemist, who publishes in the parlor 
the secrets of the laboratory. And we cannot say 
too little of our constitutional necessity of seeing 
things under private aspects, or saturated w^ith 
our humors. And yet is the God the native of 
these bleak rocks. That need makes in morals 
the capital virtue of self-trust. We must hold 



SUBJECT OR THE ONE. 73 

hard to this poverty, however scandalous, and by 
more vigorous self- recoveries, after the sallies of 
action, possess our axis more firmly. The life of 
truth is cold, and so far mournful ; but it is not 
the slave of tears, contritions, and perturbations. 
It does not attempt another's work, nor adopt an- 
other's facts. It is a main lesson of wisdom to 
know your own from another's. I have learned 
that I cannot dispose of other people's facts ; but 
I possess such a key to my own, as persuades me 
against all their denials, that they also have a key 
to theirs. A sympathetic person is placed in the 
dilemma of a swimmer among drowning men, who 
all catch at him, and if he give so much as a leg 
or a finger, they will drown him. They wish to 
be saved from the mischiefs of their vices, but not 
from their vices. Charity would be wasted on 
this poor w^aiting on the symptoms. A wise and 
hardy physician will say, Come out of that^ as the 
first condition of advice. 

In this our talking America, we are ruined by 
our good nature and listening on all sides. This 
compliance takes away the power of being greatly 
useful. A man should not be able to look other 
than directly and forthright. A preoccupied at- 
tention is the only answer to the importunate 
frivolity of other people ; an attentioi,, and to an 
aim which makes their wants frivolous. This is a 
divine answer, and leaves no appeal, and no bard 
thoughts. In Flaxman's drawing of the Eumeni- 
des of JEschylus, Orestes supplicates Apollo, 
whilst the Furies sleep on the threshold. Tha 



74 £:SSA V II. EXPERIENCE, 

face of the god expresses a shade of regret and 
compassion, but calm with the conviction of 
the irreconcilableness of the two spheres. He is 
born into other politics, into the eternal and beau- 
tiful. The man at his feet asks for his interest in 
turmoils of the earth, into w^hich his nature can- 
not enter. And tlie Eumenides there lying ex- 
press pictorially this disparity. The god is sur- 
charged with his divine destiny. 

Illusion, Temperament, Succession, Surface, 
Surprise, Reality, Subjectiveness, — these are 
threads on the loom of time, these are the lords 
of life. I dare not assume to give their order^ 
but I name them as I find them in my way. I 
know better than to claim any completeness for my 
picture. I am a fragment, and this is a fragment 
of me. I can very confidently announce one or 
another law, which throws itself into relief and 
form, but I am too young yet by some ages to 
compile a code. I gossip for my hour concerning 
the eternal politics. I have seen many fair pic- 
tures not in vain. A wonderful time I have lived 
in. I am not the novice I was fourteen, nor yet 
seven years ago. Let who will ask, where is the 
fruit? I find a private fruit sufficient. This is a 
fruit, — that I should not ask for a rash effect from 
meditations, counsels, and the hiving of truths. 
I should feel it pitiful to demand a result on this 
town and county, an overt effect on the instant 
month and year. The effect is deep and secular 
as the cause. It works on periods in which 



EXPERIENCE. 75 

mortal lifetime is lost. All I know is reception ; 
I am and I have : but I do not get, and when I 
have fancied I had gotten anything, I found I did 
not. I worship with wonder the great Fortune. 
Mj reception has been so large, that I am not an^ 
noyed by receiving this or that superabundantly. 
I say to the Genius, if he will pardon the proverb, 
In for a milU in for a million. When I receive a 
new gift, I do not macerate my body to make the 
account square, for, if I should die, I could not 
make the account square. The benefit overran the 
merit the first day, and has overran the merit ever 
since. The merit itself, so called, I reckon part 
of the receiving. 

Also, that hankering after an overt or practical 
effect seems to me an apostasy. In good earnest, 
r am willing to spare this most unnecessary deal 
of doing. Life wears to me a visionary face. 
Hardest, roughest action is visionary also. It is 
but a choice between soft and turbulent dreams. 
People disparage knowing and the intellectual- 
life, and urge doing. I am very content with 
knowing, if only I could know. That is an august 
entertainment, and Avould suffice me a great while. 
To know a little, .would be worth the expense of 
this world. I hear always the law of Adrastia, 
'' that every soul which had acquired any truth, 
should be safe from harm until another period." 

I know that the world I converse with in the 
city and in the farms, is not the world I think, 
I observe that difference, and shall observe it. 
One clay, I shall know the value and law of this 



76 ESS A V II. EXPERIENCE, 

discrepance. But I have not found that much 
was gained by manipular attempts to realize the 
world of thought. Many eager persons success- 
ively make an experiment in this way, and make 
themselves ridiculous. They acquire democratic 
manners, they foam at the mouth, they hate and 
deny. Worse, I observe, that, in the history of 
mankind, there is never a solitary example of suc- 
cess, — taking their own tests of success. I say 
this polemically, or in reply to the inquiry, why 
not realize your world? But far be from me the 
despair which prejudges the law by a paltry em- 
piricism, — gince there never was a right endeavor, 
but it succeeded. Patience and patience, we shall 
win at the last. We must be very suspicious of 
the deceptions of the element of time. It takes a 
good deal of time to eat or to sleep, or to earn a 
hundred dollars, and a very little time to enter- 
tain a hope and an insight which becomes the 
light of our life. We dress our garden, eat our 
dinners, discuss the household with our wives, and 
these things make no impression, are forgotten 
next week ; but in the solitude to which every 
man is always returning, he has a sanity and reve- 
lations, which in his passage into new worlds he 
will carry with him. Never mind the ridicule, 
never mind the defeat : up again, old heart ! — it 
seems to say, — there is victory yet for all justice ; 
^and the true romance which the world exists to 
realize, will be the transformation of genius into 
practical power. 



CHARACTER. 



The sun set ; but set not his hope: 
Stars rose; his faith was enrlier up: 
Fixed on the enormous gcilaxy, 
Deeper and older seemed his eye: 
And matched his sufferance sublime 
The taciturnity of time. 
He spoke, and words more soft than rain 
Brought the Age of Gold again : 
His action won such reverence sweet. 
As hid all measure of the feat. 



"Work of his hand 

He nor commends nor grieves? 

Pleads for itself the fact ; 

As unrepenting Nature leavee 

Her ©very act. 



CHARACTER. 



I HAVE read that those who listened to Lord 

Chatham felt that there was something finer in 
the man, than anything Avhich he said. It has 
been complained of our brilliant English historian 
of the French Revolution, that when he has told 
all his facts about Mirabeau, they do not justify his 
estimate of his genius. The Gracchi, Agis, 
Cleomenes, and others of Plutarch's heroes, do not 
in the records of facts equal their own fame. Sir 
Philip Sidney, the Earl of Essex, Sir Walter 
Raleigh, are men of great figure, and of few deeds. 
"We cannot find the smallest part of the personal 
weight of Washington in the narrative of his ex- 
ploits. The authority of the name of Schiller is 
too great for his books. This inequality of the 
reputation to the works or the anecdotes is not 
accounted for by saying that the reverberation is 
longer than the thunder-clap ; but somewhat re- 
sided in these men which begot an expectation 
that outran all their performance. The largest 
part of their power was latent. This is that 

(79) 



k 



So ESS A V III. 

which we call Character, — a reserved force which 
acts directly by presence, and without means. It 
is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, 
a Familiar or Genius, by whose impulses the man 
is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart ; 
which is company for him, so that such men are 
often solitary, or if they chance to be social, do not 
need societ}^ but can entertain themselves very 
well alone. The purest literary talent appears at 
one time great, at another time small, but character 
is of a stellar and undiminishable greatness. What 
others effect by talent or by eloquence, this man 
accomplishes by some magnetism. " Half his 
strength he put not forth.'' His victories are by 
demonstration of superiority, and not by crossing 
of bayonets. He conquers, because his arrival 
alters the face of affairs. " O Tole ! how did you 
know that Hercules was a god?" '^Because," 
answered lole, " I was content the moment my 
eyes fell on him. When I beheld Theseus, I de- 
sired that I might see him offer battle, or at least 
guide his horses in the chariot-race ; but Hercules 
did not wait for a contest ; he conquered whether 
he stood, or walked, or sat, or whatever thing he 
did." Man, ordinarily a pendant to events, only 
half attached, and that awkwardly, to the world 
he lives in, in these examples appears to share 
the life of things, and to be an expression of the 
same laws which control the tides and the sun, 
numbers and quantities. 

But to use a more modest illustration, and 
nearer home, I observe, that in our political elec- 



CHARACTER. 8 1 

tions, where this element, if it appears at all, can 
only occur in its coarsest form, we sufficiently un- 
derstand its incomparable rate. The people know 
that they need in their representative much more 
than talent, namely, the power to make his talent 
trusted. They cannot come at their ends by 
sending to Congress a learned, acute, and fluent 
speaker, if he be not one who, before he was ap- 
pointed by the people to represent them, was ap- 
pointed by Almighty God to stand for a fact, — in- 
vincibly persuaded of that fact in himself, — so that 
the most confident and the most violent persons learn 
that here is resistance on which both impudence 
and terror are wasted, namely, faith in a fact. 
The men who carry their points do not need to 
inquire of their constituents what they should 
say, but are themselves the country which they 
represent; nowhere are its emotions or opinions 
so instant and true as in them ; nowhere so pure 
from a selfish infusion. The constituency at 
home hearkens to their words, watches the color 
of their cheek, and therein, as in a glass, dresses 
its own. Our public assemblies are pretty good 
tests of manly force. Our frank countrymen of 
the west and south have a test for charactei^ 
and like to know whether the New Englander is a 
substantial man, or whether the hand can pass 
through him. 

The same motive force appears in trade. There 

are geniuses in trade, as well as in war, or the 

state, or letters ; and the reason why this or that 

man is fortunate, is not to be told. It lies in the 

27 



82 ESSA V III. 

man ; that is all anybody can tell you about it. 
See him, and you will know as easily why he 
succeeds, as, if you see Napoleon, you would com- 
prehend his fortune. In the new objects we rec- 
ognize the old game, the habit of fronting the fact, 
and not dealing with it at second hand, througli 
the perceptions of somebody else. Nature seems 
to authorize trade, as soon as you see the natural 
merchant, who appears not so much a private 
agent, as her factor and Minister of Commerce. 
His natural probity combines with his insight into 
the fabric of society, to put him above tricks, and 
he communicates to all his own faith, that con- 
tracts are of no private interpretation. The habit 
of his mind is a reference to standards of natural 
equity and public advantage ; and he inspires re- 
spect, and the wish to deal with him, both for the 
quiet spirit of honor which attends him, and for 
the intellectual pastime which the spectacle of so 
much ability aflbrds. This immensely stretched 
trade, which makes the capes of the Southern 
Ocean his wharves, and the Atlantic Sea his 
familiar port, centres in his brain only; and no- 
body in the universe can make his place good. In 
his parlor, I see very well that he has been at harc^, 
work this morning, with that knitted brow, and 
that settled humor, which all his desire to be 
courteous cannot shake off. I see plainly how 
many firm acts have been done ; how many valiant 
noe'i have this day been spoken, when others would 
have uttered ruinous yeas. I see, with the pride 
of art, and skill of masterly arithmetic and power 



CHARACTER. S3 

of remote combination, the consciousness of being 
an agent and playfellow of the original laws of 
the world. He too believes that none can supply 
him, and that a man must be born to trade, or he 
cannot learn it. 

This virtue draws the mind more, when it ap- 
pears in action to ends not so mixed. It works 
with most energy in the smallest companies and in 
private relations. In all cases, it is an extraordi- 
nary and imcomputable agent. The excess of 
physical strength is paralyzed by it. Higher na- 
tures overpower lower ones by affecting them with 
a certain sleep. The faculties are locked up, and 
offer no resistance. Perhaps that is the universal 
law. When the high cannot bring up the low to 
itself, it benumbs it, as man charms down the re- 
sistance of the lower animals. Men exert on each 
other a similar occult power. How often has the 
influence of a true master realized all the tales of 
magic ! A river of command seemed to run down 
from his eyes into all those who beheld him, a tor- 
rent of strong sad light, like an Ohio or Danube, 
which pervaded them with his thoughts, and col- 
ored all events with the hue of his mind. '' What 
means did you employ?" was the question asked 
of the wife of Concini, in regard to her treatment 
of Mary of Medici ; and the answer was, " Only 
that influence which every strong mind has over a 
weak one." Cannot Caesar in irons shuffle off the 
irons, and transfer them to the person of Hippo or 
Thraso the turnkey? Is an iron handcuff so im- 
mutable a bond ? Suppose a slaver on the coast 



84 ESSA V III. 

of Guinea should take on board a gang of negroes, 
which should contain persons of the stamp of 
Toussaint L'Ouverture ; or, let us fanc}', under 
these swarthy masks he has a gang of Washing- 
tons in chains. When they arrive at Cuba, will 
the relative order of the ship's company be the 
.same? Is there nothing but rope and iron? Is 
there no love, no reverence '/ Is there never a * 
glimpse of right in a poor slave-captain's mind; 
and cannot these be supposed available to break, 
or elude, or in any manner overmatch the tension 
of an inch or two of iron ring ? 

This is a natural power, like light and heat, and 
all nature cooperates with it. The reason why we 
feel one man's presence, and do not feel another's, 
is as simple as gravity. Truth is the summit of 
being; justice is the application of it to affairs. 
All individual natures stand in a scale, according 
to the purity of this element in them. The will 
of the pure runs down from them into other na- 
tures, as water runs down from a higher into a 
lower vessel. This natural force is no more to be 
withstood, than any other natural force. We can 
drive a stone upward for a moment into the air, 
but it is yet true that all stones will forever fall ; 
and whatever instances can be quoted of unpun- 
ished theft, or of a lie which somebody credited, 
justice must prevail, and it is the privilege of 
truth to make itself believed. Character is this 
moral order seen through the medium of an indi- 
vidual nature. An individual is an encloser. 
Time and space, liberty and necessity, truth and 



CHARACTER. 8$ 

thought, are left at large no longer. Now, the 
universe is a close or pound. All things exist in 
the man tinged with the manners of his soul. 
With what quality is in him, he infuses all nature 
that he can reach ; nor does he tend to lose him- 
self in vastness, but, at how long a curve soever, 
all his regards return into his own good at last. 
He animates all he can, and he sees only what he 
animates. He encloses the world,, as the patriot 
does his country, as a material basis for his char- 
acter, and a theatre for action. A healthy soul 
stands united with the Just and the True, as the 
magnet arranges itself with the pole, so that he 
stands to all beholders like a transparent object 
betwixt them and the sun, and whoso journeys 
toward the sun, journeys toward that person. He 
is thus the medium of the highest influence to all 
who are not on the same level. Thus, men of 
character are the conscience of the society to 
whicli they belong. 

Tlie natural measure of this power is the resist- 
ance of circumstances. Impure men consider life 
as it is reflected in opinions, events, and persons. 
They cannot see the action, until it is done. Yet 
its moral element pre-existed in the actor, and its 
quality as right or wrong, it was easy to predict. 
Everything in nature is bipolar, or has a positive 
and negative pole. There is a male and a female, 
a spirit and a fact, a north and a south. Spirit is 
the positive, the event is the negative. AVill is 
the north, action the south pole. Character may 
be ranked as having its natural place in the north* 



S6 ESSA V in. 

It shares "the magnetic currents of the sj'stem. 
The feeble souls are drawn to the south or nega- 
tive pole. They look at the profit or hurt of the 
action. They never behold a principle until it is 
lodged in a person. They do not wish to be lovely, 
but to be loved. This class of character like to 
hear of their faults ; the other class do not like to 
hear of faults ; they worship events ; secure to 
them a fact, a connection, a certain chain of cir- 
cumstances, and they will ask no more. The hero 
sees that the event is ancillary ; it must follow 
Mm. A given order of events has no power to 
secure to him the satisfaction which the imagina- 
tion attaches to it ; the soul of goodness escapes 
from any set of circumstances, whilst prosperity 
belongs to a certain mind, and will introduce that 
power and victory which is its natural fruit, into 
any order of events. No change of circumstances 
can repair a defect of character. We boast our 
emancipation from many superstitions ; but if we 
have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of 
the idolatry. What have I gained, that I no 
longer immolate a bull to Jove, or to Neptune, or 
a mouse to Hecate ; that I do not tremble before 
the Eumenides, or the Catholic Purgatory, or the 
Calvinistic Judgment-day, — if I quake at opinion, 
the public opinion, as we call it ; or at the threat 
of assault, or contumely, or bad neighbors, or 
poverty, or mutilation, or at the rumor of revolu- 
tion, or of murder ? If I quake, what matters it 
what I quake at? Our proper vice takes form in 
one or another shape, according to the sex, age, or 



CHARACTER. 8/ 

temperament of the person, and, if we are capable 
of fear, will readily find terrors. The covetous- 
ness or the malignity which saddens me, when I 
ascribe it to society, is my own. I am always en- 
vironed by myself. On the other part, rectitude 
is a perpetual victory, celebrated not by cries of 
joy, but by serenity, which is joy fixed or habitual. 
It is disgraceful to fly to events for confirmation 
of our truth and worth. The capitalist does not 
run every hour to the broker, to coin his advan- 
tages into current money of the realm ; he is satisfied 
to read in the quotations of the market, that his 
stocks have risen. The same transport which the 
occurrence of the best events in the best order 
would occasion me, I must learn to taste purer in 
the perception that my position is every hour 
meliorated, and does already command those 
events T desire. That exultation is only to be 
checked by the foresight of an order of things so 
excellent as to throw all our prosperities into the 
deepest shade. 

The face which character wears to me is self- 
sufficingness. I revere the person who is riches i 
so that I cannot think of him as alone, or poor, or 
exiled, or unhappy, or a client, but as perpetual 
patron, benefactor, and beatified man. Charactei? 
is centrality, the impossibility of being displaced 
or overset. A man should give us a sense of 
m.ass. Society is frivolous, and shreds its day 
into scraps, its conversation into ceremonies and 
escapes. But if I go to see an ingenious man, I 
shall think myself poorly entertained if he give 



8S ESSA V III, 

me nimble pieces of benevolence and etiqufjtt^s; 
rather he shall stand stoutly in his place, and 
let me apprehend, if it were only his resistaiice ; 
know that I have encountered a new and positive 
quality ; — great refreshment for both of us. It is 
much, that he does not accept the conventional 
opinions and practices. That nonconformity will 
remain a goad and remembrancer, and every in- 
quirer will have to dispose of him, in the first 
place. There is nothing real or useful that is not 
a seat of war. Our houses ring with laughter and 
personal and critical gossip, but it helps little. 
But the uncivil, unavailable man, who is a problem 
and a threat to society, whom it cannot let pass 
in silence, but must either worship or hate, — and 
to whom all parties feel related, both the leaders 
of opinion and the obscure and eccentric, — he 
helps ; he puts America and Europe in the wrong, 
and destroys the skepticism which says, " man is a 
doll, let us eat and drink, 'tis the best we can do," 
by illuminating the untried and unknown. Ac- 
quiescence in the establishment, and appeal to the 
public, indicate infirm faith, heads which are not 
clear, and which must see a house built, before 
they can comprehend the plan of it. The wise 
man not only leaves out of his thought the many, 
but leaves out the few. Fountains, fountains, the 
self-moved, the absorbed, the commander because 
he is commanded, the assured, the primary, — they 
are good ; for these announce the instant presence 
of supreme power. 

Our action should rest mathematically on our 



CHARACTER. 89 

substance. In nature, there are no false valua- 
tions. A pound of water in the ocean-tempest 
has no more gravity than in a mid-summer pond. 
All things work exactly according to their quality, 
and according to their quantity ; attempt nothing 
they cannot do, except man only. He has preten- 
sion ; he wishes and attempts things beyond his 
force. I read in a book of English memoirs, " Mr. 
Fox (afterwards Lord Holland) said, he must have 
the Treasury ; he had served up to it, and would 
have it." — Xenophon and his Ten Thousand were 
quite equal to Avhat they attempted, and did it ; 
so equal, that it was not suspected to be a grand 
and inimitable exploit. Yet there stands that 
fact unrepeated, a high- water-mark in military his- 
tory. Many have attempted it since, and not been 
equal to it. It is only on reality, that any power 
of action can be based. No institution will be 
better than the institutor. I knew an amiable and 
accomplished person who undertook a practical 
reform, yet I was never able to find in him the en- 
terprise of love he took in hand. He adopted it ' 
by ear and by the understanding from the books 
he had been reading. All his action was ten- 
tative, a piece of the city carried out into the 
fields, and was the city still, and no new fact, 
and could not inspire enthusiasm. Had there 
been something latent in the man, a terrible un- 
demonstrated genius agitating and embarrass- 
ing his demeanor, we had watched for its ad- 
vent. It is not enough that the intellect should 
see the evils and their remedy. We shall still 



90 ESS A V III, 

postpone our existence, nor take the ground to 
which we are entitled, whilst it is only a thought, 
and not a spirit that incites us. We have not yet 
served up to it. 

These are properties of life, and another trait is 
the notice of incessant growth. Men should be 
intelligent and earnest. They must also make us 
feel that they have a controlling happy future 
opening before them, which sheds a splendor on 
the passing hour. The hero is misconceived and 
misreported ; he cannot therefore wait to unravel 
any man's blunders : he is again on his road, add- 
ing new powers and honors to his domain, and new 
claims on your heart, which will bankrupt you, if 
you have loitered about the old things, and have 
not kept your relation to him, by adding to your 
wealth. New actions are the only apologies and 
explanations of old ones, which the noble can bear 
to offer or to receive. If your friend has dis- 
pleased you, you shall not sit down to consider it, 
for he has already lost all memory of the passage, 
and has doubled his power to serve you, and, ere 
you can rise up again, will burden you with bless- 
ings. 

We have no pleasure in thinking of a benevo- 
lence that is only measured by its works. Love 
is inexhaustible, and if its estate is wasted, its 
granary emptied, still cheers and enriches, and the 
man, though he sleep, seems to purify the air, and 
his house to adorn the landscape and strengthen 
the laws. People always recognize this differ- 
ence. We know who is benevolent, by quite 



CHARACTER. 9 1 

other means than the amount of subscription to 
soup-societies. It is only low merits that can be 
enumerated. Fear, when your friends say to you 
what you have done well, and say it through ; 
but when they stand with uncertain timid looks 
of respect and half-dislike, and must suspend their 
judgment for years to come, you may begin to 
hope. Those who live to the future must 
always appear selfish to those who live to the 
present. Therefore it was droll in the good 
Riemer, who has written memoirs of Goethe, 
to make out a list of his donations and good 
deeds, as, so many hundred thalers given to 
Stilling, to Hegel, to Tischbein : a lucrative 
place found for Professor Yoss, a post under the 
Grand Duke for Herder, a pension for Meyer, 
two professors recommended to foreign univer- 
sities, &c. &c. The longest list of specifications 
of benefit would look very short. A man is a 
poor creature, if he is to be measured so. For, 
all these, of course, are exceptions ; and the rule 
and hodiernal life of a good man is benefaction. 
The true charity of Goethe is to be inferred from 
the account he gave Dr. Eckermann, of the way 
' in which he had spent his fortune. " Each bonmot 
of mine has cost a purse of gold. Half a million 
of my own money, the fortune I inherited, my 
salary, and the large income derived from my 
writings for fifty years back, have been expended 
to instruct me in what I now know. I have be- 
sides seen," &c. 

I own it is but poor chat and gossip to go to 



92 ESSA V IIL 

enumerate traits of this simple and rapid power, 
and we are painting the lightning with charcoal ; 
but in these long nights and vacations, I like to 
console myself so. Nothing but itself can copy 
it. A word warm from the heart enriches me. 
I surrender at discretion. How death -cold is 
literary genius before this fire of life ! These are 
the touches that reanimate my heavy soul, and 
give it eyes to pierce the dark of nature. I find, 
where I thought myself poor, there was I most 
rich. Thence comes a new intellectual exaltation, 
to be again rebuked by some new exhibition of 
character. Strange alternation of attraction and 
repulsion ! Character repudiates intellect, yet 
excites it ; and character passes into thought, is 
published so, and then is ashamed before new 
flashes of moral worth. 

Character is nature in the highest form. It is 
of no use to ape it, or to contend with it. Some- 
what is possible of resistance, and of persistence, 
and of creation, to this power, which will foil all 
emulation. 

This masterpiece is best where no hands but 
nature's have been laid on it. Care is taken that 
the greatly-destined shall slip up into life in 
the shade, with no thousand-eyed Athens to 
watch and blazon every new thought, every blush- 
ing emotion of young genius. Two persons 
lately, — very young children of the most high 
God, — have given me occasion for thought. When 
I explored the source of their sanctity, and 
charm for the imagination, it seemed as if each 



CHARACTER. 93 

answered, ' From my non-conformity : I never lis- 
tened to your people's law, or to what they call 
their gospel, and wasted my time. I was con- 
tent with the simple rural poverty of my 
own : hence this sweetness : my work never 
reminds you of that ; — is pure of that.' And 
nature advertises me in such persons, tbatj 
in democratic America, she will not be democra- 
tized. How cloistered and constitutionally se- 
questered from the market and from scandal I It 
was only this morning that I sent away some 
wild flowers of these wood-gods. They are a re- 
lief from literature, — these fresh draughts from 
the sources of thought and sentiment ; as we 
read, in an age of polish and criticism, the first 
lines of written prose and verse of a nation. How 
captivating is their devotion to their favorite 
books, whether JEschylus, Dante, Shakespeare, or 
Scott, as feeling that they have a stake in that 
book: who touches that, .touches them; — and 
especially the total solitude of the critic, the Pat- 
mos of thought from which he writes, in uncon- 
sciousness of any eyes that shall ever read this 
writing. Could they dream on still, as angels, 
and not wake to comparisons, and to be flattered! 
f et some natures are too good to be spoiled by 
praise, and wherever the vein of thought reaches 
down into the profound, there is no danger from 
vanity. Solemn friends will warn them of the 
danger of the head's being turned b}^ the flourish 
of trumpets, but they can afford to smile. I re- 
member the indignation of an eloquent Methodist 



94 ESS A V III. 

at the kind admonitions of a Doctor of Divinity, 
— ' My friend, a man can neither be praised nor 
insulted.' But forgive the counsels; they are 
very natural. I remember the thought which oc- 
curred to me when some ingenious and spiritual 
foreigners came to America, was. Have you been 
victimized in being brought hither? — or, prior 
to *that, answer me this, ' Are you victimizable ? " 
As I have said, nature keeps these sovereign- 
ties in her own hands, and however pertly our 
sermons and disciplines would divide some share 
of credit, and teach that the laws fashion the cit- 
izen, she goes her own gait, and puts the wisest 
in the wrong. She makes very light of gospels 
and prophets, as one who has a great many more 
to produce, and no excess of time to spare on 
any one. There is a class of men, individuals of 
which appear at long intervals, so eminently en- 
dowed with insight and virtue, that they have 
been unanimously saluted as divine^ and who seem 
to be an accumulation' of that power we consider„ 
Divine persons are character born, or to borrow a 
phrase from Napoleon, they are victory organized. 
They are usually received with ill-will, because 
they are new, and because they set a bound to the 
axasfgeration that has been made of the personal- 
ity of the last divine person. Nature never rhymes 
her children, nor makes two men alike. > When 
we see a great man, we fancy a resemblance to 
some historical person, and predict the sequel of 
his character and fortune, a result which he is sure 
to disappoint. None will ever solve the problem 



CHARACTER, 95 

of his character according to our prejudice, but 
only in his own high, unprecedented way. Char- 
acter wants room ; must not be crowded on by 
persons, nor be judged from glimpses got in the 
press of affairs or on few occasions. It needs per- 
spective, as a great building. It may not, proba- 
bly does not, form relations rapidly; and we 
should not require rash explanation, either on the 
popular ethics, or on our own, of its action. 

I look on Sculpture as history. I do not think 
the Apollo and the Jove impossible in flesh and 
blood. Every trait which the artist recorded in 
stone, he had seen in life, and better than his 
copy. We have seen man}^ counterfeits, but we 
are born believers in great men. How easily we 
read in old books, when men were few, of the 
smallest action of the patriarchs. We require 
that a man should be so large and columnar in the 
landscape, that it should deserve to be recorded, 
that he arose, and girded up his loins, and 
departed to such a place. The most credible 
pictures are those of majestic men who prevailed 
at their entrance, and convinced the senses; as 
happened to the eastern magian who was sent to 
test the merits of Zertusht or Zoroaster. When 
the Yunani sage arrived at Balkh, the Persians tell 
us, Gushtasp appointed a day on which the Mo- 
beds of every country should assemble, and a 
golden chair was placed for the Yunani sage. 
Then the beloved of Yezdam, the prophet Zer- 
tusht, advanced into the midst of the assembly. 
The Yunani sage, on seeing that chief, said, " This 



96 ESS A V III. 

form and this gait cannot lie, and nothing but 
truth can proceed from them." Plato said, it was 
impossible not to believe in the children of the 
gods, "though they should speak without probable 
or necessary arguments." 1 should think myself 
very unhappy in my associates, if I could not 
credit the best things in history. " John Brad-/ 
shaw," says Milton, '^ appears like a consul, from* 
whom the fasces are not to depart with the year ; 
so that not on the tribunal only, but throughout 
his life, you would regard him as sitting in judg- 
ment upon kings." I find it more credible, since 
it is anterior information, that one man should 
know heaven^ as the Chinese say, than that so many 
men should know the world. "The virtuous 
prince confronts the gods, without any misgiving. 
He waits a hundred ages till a sage comes, and 
does not doubt. He who confronts the gods, 
without any misgiving, knows heaven ; he who 
waits a hundred ages until a sage comes, without 
doubting, knows men. Hence the virtuous prince 
moves, and for ages shows empire the way." But 
there is no need to seek remote examples. He is 
a dull observer whose experience has not taught 
him the reality and force of magic, as w^ell as of 
chemistry. The coldest precisian cannot go abroad 
without encountering inexplicable influences. 
One man fastens an eye on him, and the graves 
of the memory render up their dead ; the secrets 
that make him wretched either to keep or to betray, 
must be yielded; — another, and he cannot speak, 
and the bones of his body seem to lose their car- 



CHARACTER, 97 

tilages ; the entrance of a friend adds grace, 
boldness, and eloquence to him ; and there are 
persons, he cannot choose but remember, who gave 
a transcendent expansion to his thought, and kin- 
dled another life in his bosom. 

What is so excellent as strict relations of amit}'-, 
when they spring from this deep root ? The suffi- 
cient reply to the skeptic, who doubts the power 
and the furniture of man, is in that possibilit}^ of 
joyful intercourse with persons, which makes the 
faith and practice of all reasonable men. I know 
nothing which life has to offer so satisfying as the 
profound good understanding, which can subsist, 
after much exchange of good offices, between two 
virtuous men, each of whom is sure of himself, 
and sure of his friend. It is a happiness which 
postpones all other gratifications, and makes poli- 
tics, and commerce, and churches, cheap. For, 
when men shall meet as they ought, each a bene- 
factor, a shower of stars, clothed with thoughts, 
with deeds, with accomplishments, it should be 
th^ festival of nature which all things announce. 
Of such friendship, love in the sexes is the first 
symbol, as all other things are symbols of love. 
Those relations to the best men, which, at one 
time, we reckoned the romances of youth, become, 
in the progress of the character, the most solid 
enjoyment. 

If it were possible to live in right relations with 

men ! — if we could abstain from asking an3^thing 

of them, from asking their praise, or help, or pity, 

and content us with compelling them through the 

D 



98 ESS A V in. 

virtue of the eldest laws! Could we not deal 
with a few persons, — with one person,— after the 
unwritten statutes, and make an experiment of 
their efficacy? Could we not pay our friend the 
compliment of truth, of silence, of forbearing? 
Need we be so eager to seek him ? If we are re- 
lated, we shall meet. It was a tradition of the 
ancient world, that no metamorphosis could hide 
a god from a god ; and there is a Greek verse 
which runs, 

" The gods are to each other not unknown." 

Friends also follow the laws of divine necessity; 
they gravitate to each other, and cannot other- 
wise : — 

When each the other shall avoid, 
Shall each by each be most enjoyed. 

Their relation is not made, but allowed. The 
gods must seat themselves without seneschal in 
our Olympus, and as they can instal themselves 
by seniority divine. Society is spoiled, if pains 
are taken, if the associates are brought a mile to 
meet. And if it be not society, it is a mischievous, 
low, degrading janglo, though made up of the bestc 
All the greatness of each is kept back, and every 
foible in painful activity, as if the Olympians 
should meet to exchange snuff-boxes. 

Life goes headlong. We chase some flyiug 
scheme, or we are hunted by some fear or com- 
mand behind us. But if suddenly we encounter 



CHARACTER. 99 

a friend, we pause ; or heat and hurry look fool- 
ish enough ; now pause, now possession, is re- 
quired, and the power to swell the moment from 
the resources of the heart. The moment is all, in 
all noble relations. 

A divine person is the prophecy of the mind ; 
.Q. friend is the hope of the heart. Our beatitude 
waits for the fulfilment of these two in one. The 
ages are opening this moral force. All force is 
the shadow or symbol of that. Poetry is joyful 
and strong, as it draws its inspiration thence. 
Men write their names on the world, as they are 
filled with this. History has been mean ; our 
nations have been mobs ; we have never seen a 
man ; that divine form we do not yet know, but 
only the dream and prophecy of such: we do not 
know the majestic manners which belong to him, 
which appease and exalt the beholder. We shall 
one day see that the most private is the most pub- 
lic energy, that quality atones for quantit3% and 
grandeur of character acts in the dark, and suc- 
cors them who never saw it. What greatness has 
yet appeared, is beginnings and encouragements 
to us in this direction. The histor}' of those gods 
and saints which the world has written, and then 
worshipped, are documents of character. The 
ages have exulted in the manners of a youth who 
owed nothing to fortune, and who was hanged at 
the Tj^burn of his nation, who, b}^ the pure quality 
of his nature, shed an* epic splendor around the 
facts of his death, which has transfigured every 
particular into an universal symbol for the eyes 



100 ESSA V III. 

of mankind. This great defeat is hitherto our 
highest fact. But the mind requires a victory to 
the senses, a force of character which will convert 
judge, jury, soldier, and king ; which will rule 
animal and mineral virtues, and blend with the 
courses of sap, of rivers, of winds, of stars, and of 
moral agents. 

If Ave cannot attain at a bound to these gran- 
deurs, at least, let us do them homage. In society, 
high advantages are set down to the possessor, as 
disadvantages. It requires the more wariness in 
our private estimates. 1 do not forgive in my 
friends the failure to know a fine character, and 
to entertain it with thankful hospitalit}'. When, 
at last, that which we have always longed for, is 
arrived, and shines on us with glad rays out of 
that far celestial land, then to be coarse, then to 
be critical, and treat such a visitant with the jab- 
ber and suspicion of the streets, argues a vulgarity 
that seems to shut the doors of heaven. This is 
confusion, this the right insanity, when the soul 
no longer knows its own, nor where its allegiance, 
its religion, are due. Is there any religion but 
this, to know that, wherever in the wide desert 
of being, the holy sentiment we cherish has opened 
.iito a flower, it blooms for me? if none sees it, I 
see it ; I am aware, if I alone, of the greatness of 
the fact. Whilst it blooms, I will keep sabbath 
or holy time, and suspend my gloom, and my folly 
and jokes. Nature is indulged by the presence 
of this guest. There are many eyes that can de- 
tect and honor the prudent and household virtue^^^ 



CHARACTER. lOI 

there are many that can discern Genius on his 
starry track, though the mob is incapable ; but 
when that love which is all-suffering, all-abstain- 
ing, all-aspiring, which has vowed to itself, that it 
will be a wretch and also a fool in this world, 
sooner than soil its white hands by any compli- 
ances, comes into -vr r^trects raid houses, — only 
the pure and aspiri^ig can knovv its face, and the 
only compliment cbvij can pay it, is to own it. 



MANNERS- 



* How near to good is what is fair! 
Which we no sooner see, 
But with the lines and outward air 
Our senses taken be. 

Again youselves compose, 
And now put all the aptness on 
Of Figure, that Proportion 

Or Color can disclose ; 
That if those silent arts were lost, 
Design and Picture, they might boast 

From you a newer ground, 
Instructed by the heightening sense 
Of dignity and reverence 

In their true motions found." 

Ben Johnson. 



MANNERS. 



Half the world, it is said, knows not how the 
other half live. Our Exploring Expedition saw 
the Feejee islanders getting their dinner off human 
bones ; and they are said to eat their own wives 
and children. The husbandry of the modern in- 
habitants of Gournou (west of old Thebes) is 
philosophical to a fault. To set up their house- 
keeping, nothing is requisite but two or three 
' earttien pots, a stone to grind meal, and a mat 
which is the bed. The house, namely, a tomb, is 
ready without rent or taxes. No rain can pass 
through the roof, and there is no door, for there is 
no want of one, as there is nothing to lose. If the 
house do not please them, the}^ walk out and enter 
another, as there are several hundreds at their 
command. " It is somewhat singular," adds Bel- 
zoni, to whom we owe this account, " to talk of 
happiness among people who live in sepulchres, 
among the corpses and rags of an ancient nation 
which they know nothing of." In the deserts of 
Borgoo, the rock-Tibboos still dwell in caves, like 
cliff-swallows, and the language of these negroes 

(105) 



I06 ESSAY IV. 

is compared by their neighbors to the shrieking of 
bats, and to the whistling of birds. Again, the 
Bornoos have no proper names ; individuals are 
called after their height, thickness, or other acci- 
dental quality, and have nicknames merel}^. But 
the salt, the dates, the ivory, and the gold, for 
which these horrible regions are visited, find their 
way into countries where the purchaser and con- 
sumer can hardly be ranked in one race with these 
cannibals and man-stealers ; countries where man 
serves himself with metals, wood, stone, glass, 
gum, cotton, silk, and wool ; honors himself with 
architecture ; writes laws, and contrives to exe- 
cute his will through the hands of many nations ; 
and, especially, establishes a select society, run- 
ning through all the countries of intelligent men, 
a self-constituted aristocracy, or fraternity of the 
best, which, without written law or exact usage of 
any kind, perpetuates itself, colonizes every new-' 
planted island, and adopts and makes its own 
whatever personal beauty or extraordinary native 
endowment anywhere appears. 

What fact more conspicuous in modern history 
than the creation of the gentleman ? Chivalry is 
' that, and loyalty is that, and, in English literature, 
half the drama, and all the novels, from Sir Philip 
Sidney to Sir Walter Scott, paint this figure. The 
^ord gentleman^ which, like the word Christian, 
must hereafter characterize the present and the 
few preceding centuries, by the importance at- 
tached to it, is a homage to personal and incom- 
municable properties. Frivolous and fantastic 



MANNERS. 107 

additions have got associated with the name, but 
the steady interest of mankind in it must be attrib- 
uted to the valuable properties which it desig- 
nates. An element which unites all the most 
forcible persons of every country; makes them 
intelligible and agreeable to each other, and is 
somewhat so precise, that it is at once felt if an 
individual lack the masonic sign, cannot be any 
casual product, but must be an average result of 
the character and faculties universally found in 
men. It seems a certain permanent average ; as 
the atmosphere is a permanent composition, whilst 
so many gases are combined only to be decom- 
pounded. Comme il faut^ is the Frenchman's 
description of good society, as ive must be. It is 
a spontaneous fruit of talents and feelings of pre- 
cisely that class who have most vigor, who take 
the lead in the world of this hour, and, though 
far from pure, far from constituting the gladdest 
and highest tone of human feeling, is as gc^od as 
the whole society permits it to be. It is made of 
the spirit, more than of the talent of men, and is 
a compound result, into which every great force 
enters as an ingredient, namely, virtue, wit, beauty, 
wealth, and power. 

There is something equivocal in all the words in 
use to express the excellence of manners and social 
cultivation, because the quantities are fluxional, 
and the last effect is assumed by the senses as the 
cause. The word gentleman has not any correla- 
tive abstract to express the quality. Gentility ist 
mean, and gentilesse is obsolete. But we musi 



I08 ESSAY IV. 

keep alive in the vernacular, the distinction he- 
tween fashion, 2l word of narrow and often sinister 
meaning, and the heroic character which the gen- 
tleman imports. The usual words, however, must 
be respected : they will be found to contain the 
root of the matter. The point of distinction in 
all this class of names, as courtesy, chivalry, fash- 
ion, and the like, is, that the flower and fruit, not 
the grain of the tree, are contemplated. It is 
beauty which is the aim this time, and not worth. 
The result is now in question, although our words 
intimate well enough the popular feeling, that the 
appearance supposes a substance. The gentleman 
is a man of truth, lord of his own actions, and ex 
pressing that lordship in his behavior, not in any 
manner dependent and servile either on persons, 
or opinions, or possessions. Beyond this fact of 
truth and real force, the word denotes good-nature 
or benevolence : manhood first, and then gentle- 
ness. The popular notion certainly adds a condi- 
tion of ease and fortune ; but that is a natural 
result of personal force and love, tliat they should 
possess and dispense the goods of the Avorld. In 
times of violence, every eminent person must fall 
m with many opportunities to approve his stout- 
iiess and worth ; therefore every man's name that 
emerged at all from the mass in the feudal ages, 
rattles in our ear like a flourish of trumpets. But 
personal force never goes out of fashion. That is 
still paramount to-day, and, in the moving crowd 
of good society, the men of valor and reality are 
known, and rise to their natural place. The com- 



MANNERS. 109 

petition is transferred from war to politics and 
trade, but the personal force appears readily 
enough in these new arenas. 

Power first, or no leading class. In politics 
and in trade, bruisers and pirates are of better 
promise than talkers and clerks. God knows tJiat 
- all sorts of gentlemen knock at the door ; but 
whenever used in strictness, and with any 
emphasis, the name will be found to point at 
original energy. It describes a man standing in 
his own right, and working after untaught 
methods. In a good lord, there must first be a 
good animal, at least to the extent of yielding the 
incomparable advantage of animal spirits. The 
ruling class must have more, but they must have 
these, giving in every company the sense of power, 
which makes things easy to be done which daunt the 
wise. The society of the energetic class, in their 
friendly and festive meetings, is full of courage, 
and of attempts, which intimidate the pale scholar. 
The courage which girls exhibit is like a battle of 
Lundy's Lane, or a sea-fight. The intellect relies 
on memory to make some supplies to face these 
extemporaneous squadrons. But memory is a 
base mendicant with basket and badge, in the 
presence of these sudden masters. The rulers of 
society must be up to the work of the world, and 
equal to their versatile office : men of the right 
Ceesarean pattern, who have great range of afifiniiy. 
I am far from believing the timid maxim of Lord 
Falkland, (''that for ceremony there must go two 
to it : since a bold fellow will go through the cun- 



no ESSAV IV. 

ningest forms,") and am of opinion that the 
gentleman is the bold fellow whose forms are 
not to be broken through; and only that plenteous 
nature is rightful master, which is the complement 
of whatever person it converses with. Mj gen- 
tleman gives the laAv where he is ; he will outpray 
saints in chapel, outgeneral veterans in the field, 
and outshine all courtesy in the hall. He is good 
company for pirates, and good with academicians ; 
so that it is useless to fortify yourself against him ; 
he has the private entrance to all minds, and I 
could as easily exclude myself, as him. The fa- 
mous gentlemen of Asia and Europe have been of 
this strong type: Saladin, Sapor, the Cid, Julius 
Csesar, Scipio, Alexander, Pericles, and the lord- 
liest personages. They sat very carelessly in their 
chairs, and were too excellent themselves, to value 
any condition at a high rate. 

• A plentiful fortune is reckoned necessary, in 
the popular judgment, to the completion of this 
man of the world: and it is a material deputy 
which walks through the dance which the first has 
led. Money is not essential, but this wide affinity 
is, which transcends the habits of clique and caste, 
and makes itself felt by men of all classes. ]f the 
aristocrat is only valid in fashionable circles, and 
not with trackmen, he will never be a leader in 
fashion : and if the man of the people cannot 
speak on equal terms with the gentleman, so that 
the gentleman shall perceive that he is already 
really of his own order, he is not to be feared. 
Diogenes, Socrates, and Epaminondas are gen- 



MANNERS. 1 1 1 

tlemen of the best blood, who have chosen the 
condition of poverty, when that of wealth was 
equally open to them. I use these old names, but 
the men I speak of are my contemporaries; For- 
tune will not supply to every generation one of 
these well-appointed knights, but every collection 
of men furnishes some example of the class : and 
the politics of this country, and the trade of every 
town, are controlled by these hardy and irrespon- 
sible doers, who have invention to take the lead, 
and a broad sympathy which puts them in fellow- 
ship with crowds, and makes their action popular. 
The manners of this class are observed and 
caught with devotion by men of taste. The as- 
sociation of these masters with each other, and 
with men intelligent of their merits, is mutually 
agreeable and stimulating. The good forms, the 
happiest expressions of each, are repeated and 
adopted. By swift consent, everything super- 
fluous is dropped, everything graceful is renewed. 
Fine manners show themselves formidable to the 
uncultivated man. They are a subtler science of 
defence to parry and intimidate ; but once matched 
by the skill of the other party, they drop the 
point of the sword, — points and fences disappear, 
and the youth finds himself in a more transparent 
atmosphere, wherein life is a less troublesome 
game, and not a misunderstanding rises between 
the players. Manners aim to facilitate life, to get 
rid of impediments, and bring the man pure to 
energize. They aid our dealing and conversation, 
as a railway aids travelling, by getting rid of all 



112 ESSAY IV. 

avoidable obstructions of the road, and leaving 
nothing to be conquered but pure space. These 
forms very soon become fixed, and a fine sense of 
propriety is cultivated with the more heed, that it 
becomes a badge of social and civil distinctions. 
Thus grows up Fashion, an equivocal semblance, 
the most puissant, the most fantastic and frivo-* 
lous, the most feared and followed, and which 
morals and violence assault in vain. 

There exists a strict relation between the class 
of power, and the exclusive and polished circles. 
The last are always filled or filling from the first. 
The strong men usually give some allowance even 
to the petulances of fashion, for that affinity they 
find in it. Napoleon, child of the revolution, de- 
stroyer of the old noblesse, never ceased to court 
the Faubourg St. Germain : doubtless with the 
feeling, that fashion is a homage to men of his 
stamp. Fashion, though in a strange way, re- 
presents all manly virtue. It is virtue gone to 
seed : it is a kind of posthumous honor. It does 
not often caress the great, but the children of the 
great : it is a hall of the Past. It usually sets its 
face against the great of this hour. .Great men 
are not commonly in its halls : they are absent in 
the field : they are working, not triumphing. 
Fashion is made up of their children ; of those 
who, through the value and virtue of somebody, 
have acquired lustre to their name, marks of dis- 
tinction, means of cultivation and generosity, and, 
in their physical organization, a certain health and 
excellence, which secures to them, if not the high- 



MANNERS. 113 

est power to work, yet high power to enjoy. The 
chiss of power, the working heroes, the Cortez, the 
Nelson, the Napoleon, see that this is the festivity 
and permanent celebration of such as they ; that 
fashion is funded talent; is Mexico, Marengo, and 
Trafalgar beaten out thin ; that the brilliant 
names of fashion run back to just such busy 
names as their own, fifty or sixty years ago. They 
are the sowers, their sons shall be the reapers, and 
tlidr sons, in the ordinary course of things, nmst 
yield the possession of the harvest to new compet- 
itors with keener eyes and stronger frames. The 
city is recruited from the country. In the year 
1805, it is said, every legitimate monarch in 
Europe was imbecile. The city would have died 
out, rotted, and exploded, long ago, but that it 
was reinforced from the fields. It is only country 
which came to town day before yesterday, that is 
city and court to-day. 

Aristocracy and fashion are certain inevitable 
results. These mutual selections are indestruct- 
ible. If they provoke anger in the least favored 
class, and the excluded majority revenge them- 
selves on the excluding minority, by the strong 
hand, and kill them, at once a new class finds it- 
self at the top, as certainly as cream rises in a 
bowl of milk : and if the people should destroy 
class after class, until two men only were left, one 
of these would be the leader, and would be invol- 
untarily served and copied by the other. You 
may keep this minority out of sight and out of 
mind, but it is tenacious of life, and is one of the 



114 ESSAY IV. 

estates of the realm. I am the more struck with 
this tenacity, when I see its work. It respects 
the administration of such unimportant matters, 
that we should not look for any durability in its 
rule. We sometimes meet men under some strong 
moral influence, as, a patriotic, a literary, a relig- 
ious movement, and feel that the moral sentiment 
rules man and nature. We think all other dis- 
tinctions and ties will be slight and fugitive, this 
of caste or fashion, for example ; yet come from 
year to year, and see how permanent that is, in 
this Boston or New York life of man, where, too, 
it has not the least countenance from the law of 
the land. Not in Egypt or in India a firmer or 
more inipassable line. Here are associations whose 
ties go over, and under, and through it, a meet- 
ing of merchants, a military corps, a college class, 
a fire-club, a professional association, a political, a 
religious convention ; — the persons seem to draw 
inseparably near; yet,that assembly once dispersed, 
its members will not in the year meet again. 
Each returns to his degree in the scale of good 
society, porcelain remains porcelain, and earthen 
earthen. The objects of fashion may be frivoluus, 
or fashion may be objectless, but the nature of 
'this union and selection can be neither frivolous 
,'nor accidental. Each man's rank in that perfect 
graduation depends on some symmetry in his 
structure, or some agreement in his structure to 
the symmetry of society. Its doors unbar instan- 
taneously to a natuT'al claim of their own kind. 
A natural gentlemen finds his way in, and will 



MANNERS. 1 1 5 

keep the oldest patrician out, who has lost his in- 
trinsic rank. Fashion understands itself; good- 
breeding and personal superiority of whatever 
country readily fraternize with those of every 
other. The chiefs of savage tribes have distin- 
guished themselves in London and Paris, by th« 
purity of their tournure. 

To say what good of fashion we can, — it rests 
on realit}^, and hates nothing so much as pretend- 
ers ; — to exclude and mystify pretenders, and 
send them into everlasting ' Coventry,' is its de- 
light. We contemn, in turn, every other gift of 
men of the world ; but the habit even in little and 
the least matters, of not appealing to any but our own 
sense of propriety, constitutes the foundation of 
all chivalry. There is almost no kind of self-reli- 
ance, so it be sane and proportioned, which fashion 
does not occasionally adopt, and give it the free- 
dom of its saloons. A sainted soul is always 
elegant, and, if it will, passes unchallenged into 
the most guarded ring. But so will Jock the 
teamster pass, in some crisis that brings him 
thither, and find favor, as long as his head is not 
giddy with the new circumstance, and the iron 
shoes do not wish to dance in waltzes and cotil- 
lons. For there is nothing settled in manners, but 
the laws of behavior yield to the energy of the in- 
dividual. The maiden at her first ball, the coun- 
tryman at a city dinner, believes that there is a 
ritual according to which every act and compli- 
ment must be performed, or the failing party must 
be cast out of this presence. Later, they learn 



Il6 £SSAV IV. 

that good sense and character make their own 
forms every moment, and speak or abstain, take 
wine or refuse it, stay or go, sit in a chair or 
sprawl with children on the fioor, or stand on their 
head, or what else soever, in a new and aboriginal 
way: and that strong will is always in fashion, 
let who will be unfashionable. All that fashion 
demands is composure, and self-content. A circle 
of men perfectly well-bred would be a company of 
sensible persons, in which every man's native 
manners and character appeared. If the fashion- 
ist have not this quality, he is nothing. We are 
such loverri of self-reliance, that we excuse in a 
man many sins, if he will show us a complete sat- 
isfaction in his position, which asks no leave to be, 
of mine, or any man's good opinion. But any 
deference to some eminent man or woman of the 
world forfeits all privilege of nobility. He is an 
underling : I have nothing to do wdth him ; I will 
speak with his master. A man should not go 
where he cannot carrj^ his* whole sphere or society 
with him, — ^not bodily, the whole circle of his 
friends, but atmospherically. He should preserve 
in a new company the same attitude of mind and 
reality of relation, which his daily associates draw 
him to, else he is shorn of his best beams, and will 
be an orphan in the merriest club. "If you could 

see Yich Ian Vohr with his tail on ! " But 

Vich Ian Vohr must always carry his belongings 
in some fashion, if not added as honor, then sev- 
ered as disgrace. 

There will always be in society certain persons 



MANNERS. 117 

<f"ho are mercuiies of its approbation, and whose 
g'lance will at any time determine for the curious 
their standing in the world. These are the cham- 
berlains of the lesser gods. Accept their coldness 
as an omen of grace with the loftier deities, and 
2.II0W them all their privilege. They are clear in 
their office, nor could they be thus formidable, 
without their own merits. But do not measure 
the importance of this class by their pretension, 
or imagine that a fop can be the dispenser of 
honor and shame. They pass also at their just 
rate : for how can they otherwise, in circles which 
exist as a sort of herald's office for the sifting of 
character ? 

As tlie first thing man requires of man is reality, 
so, that appears in all the forms -of society. We 
pointedly, and by name, introduce the parties to 
each other. Know you before all heaven and 
earth, that this is Andrew, and this is Gregory ; — 
they look each other in the eye ; they grasp each 
other's hand, to identify and signalize each other. 
It is a great satisfaction. A gentleman never 
dodges : his eyes look straight forward, and he as- 
sures the other part3^ first of all, that he has been 
met. For what is it that we seek, in so many 
visits and hospitalities ? Is it your draperies, pic- 
tures, and decorations? Or, do we not insatiably 
ask. Was a man, in the house ? I may easily go 
into a great household where there is much sub- 
stance, excellent provision for comfort, luxury, 
and taste, and j^et not encounter there any Am- 
phitryon, who shall subordinate these appendages. 



Il8 ESSAY IV, 

I may go into a cottage, and find a farmer wlio 
feels that he is the man I have come to see, and 
fronts me accordingly. It was therefore a very 
natural point of old feudal etiquette, that a gen- 
tleman v^^ho received a visit, though it v^ere of his 
sovereign, should not leave his roof, but should 
wait his arrival at the door of his house. No 
house, though it were the Tuileries, or the Escu- 
rial, is good for anything without a master. And 
yet we are not often gratified by this hospitality. 
Everybody we know surrounds himself with a 
fine house, fine books, conservatory, gardens, 
equipage, and all manner of toys, as screens to in- 
terpose between himself and his guest. Does it 
not seem as if man was of a veiy slj^ elusive na- 
ture, and dreaded nothing so much as a full ren 
contre front to front with his fellow? It were 
unmerciful, I know, quite to abolish the use of 
these screens, which are of eminent convenience, 
whether the guest is too great, (ir too little. We 
call together many friends who keep each other in 
play, or, by luxuries and ornaments we amuse the 
young people, and guard our retirement. Or if, 
perchance, a searching realist comes to our gate, 
before whose eye we have no care to standi then 
again we run to our curtain, and hide ourselves as 
Adam at the voice of the Lord God in the garden. 
Cardinal Caprara, the Pope's legate at Paris, de- 
fended himself from the glances of Napoleon, by 
an immense pair of green spectacles. Napoleon 
remarked them, and speedil}^ managed to rally 
them off: and yet Napoleon, in his turn, was not 



MANNERS. 1 19 

great enough with eight hundred thousand troops 
at his back, to face a pair of freeborn eyes, but 
fenced himself with etiquette, and within triple 
barriers of reserve : and, as all the world knows 
from Madame de Stael, was wont, when he found 
himself observed, to discharge his face of all ex- 
pression. But emperors and rich men are by no 
means the most? skilful masters of good manners. 
No rent-roll nor army-list can dignif^^ skulking and 
dissimulation : and the first point of courtesy must 
always be truth, as really all the forms of good- 
breeding point that way. 

I have just been reading, in Mr. Hazlitt's trans- 
lation, Montaigne's account of his journey into 
Italy, and am struck with nothing more agreeably 
than the self-respecting fashions of the time. His 
arrival in each place, the arrival of a gentleman 
of -France, is an event of some consequence. 
Wherever he goes, he pays a visit to whatever 
prince or gentleman of note resides upon his road, 
as a duty to himself and to civilization. When 
he leaves any house in which he has lodged for a 
few weeks, he causes his arms to be painted and 
hung up as a perpetual sign to the house, as was 
the custom of gentlemen. 

The complement of this graceful self-respect, 
and that of all the points of good breeding I most 
require and insist upon, is deference. I like that 
every cliair should be a throne, and hold a king. 
I prefer a tendency to stateliness, to an excess of 
fellowship. Let the incommunicable objects of 
nature and the metaphysical isolation of man 



120 ESSAY IV. 

teach las independence. Let us not be too much 
acquainted. I would have a man enter his house 
through a hall filled with heroic and sacred sculp- 
tures, that he might not want the hint of tran- 
quillity and self-poise. We should meet each morn= 
ing, as from foreign countries, and spending the 
day together, should depart at night, as into for- 
eign countries. In all things I would have the ■ 
island of man inviolate. Let us sit apart as the 
gods, talking from peak to peak all around Olym- 
pus. No degree of affection need invade this 
religion. This is myrrh and rosemary to keep the 
other sweet. Lovers should guard their strange- 
ness. If they forgive too much, all slides into 
confusion and meanness. It is easy to push this 
deference to a Chinese etiquette ; but coolness and 
absence of heat and haste indicate fine qualities. 
A gentleman makes no noise : a lady is serene. 
Proportionate is our disgust at those invaders who 
fill a studious house with blast and running, to 
secure some paltry convenience. Not less I dis- 
like a low sympathy of each with his neighbor's 
needs. Must we have a good understanding with 
one another's palates ? as foolish people who have 
lived long together, know when each wants salt 
or sugar. I pray my companion, if he wishes for 
bread, to ask me for bread, and if he wishes for 
sassafras or arsenic, to ask me for them, and not to 
hold out his plate, as if I knew already. Every 
natural function can be dignified by deliberation 
and privacy. Let us leave hurr}^ to slaves. The 
compliments and ceremonies of our breeding 



MANNERS. 121 

should signify, however remotely, the recollection 
of the grandeur of our destiny. 

The flower of courtesy does not very well bide 
handling, but if we dare to open another leaf, and 
explore what parts go loits conformation, we shall 
find also an intellectual quality. To the leaders 
of men, the brain as well as the flesh and the heart 
must furnish a proportion. Defect in manners is 
usually the defect of fine perceptions. Men are 
too coarsely made for the delicacy of beautiful 
carriage and customs. It is not quite sufficient to 
good-breeding, a union of kindness and independ- 
ence. We imperatively require a perception of, 
and a homage to beauty in our companions. Other 
virtues are in request in the field and workyard, 
but a certain degree of taste is not to be spared in 
those we sit with. I could better eat with one who 
did not respect the truth of the laws, than with a 
sloven and unpresentable person. Moral qualities 
rule the world, but at short distances the senses 
are despotic. The same discrimination of fit and 
fair runs out, if with less rigor, into all parts of 
life. The average spirit of the energetic class is 
good sense, acting under certain limitations and 
to certain ends. It entertains every natural gift. 
Social in its nature, it respects everything which 
tends to unite men. It delights in measure. The 
love of beauty is mainly the love of measure or 
proportion. The person who screams, or uses the 
superlative degree, or converses with heat, puts 
whole drawing-rooms to flight. If you wish to be 
loved, love measure. You must have genius, or a 



122 ESSAY IV. 

prodigious usefulness, if you will hide the want 
of measure. This perception comes in to polish 
and perfect the parts of the social instrument. 
Society will pardon much to genius and special 
gifts, but, being in its nature a convention, it 
loves what is conventional, or what belongs to 
coming together. That makes the good and bad 
of manners, namely, what helps or hinders fellow- 
ship. For, fashion is not good sense absolute, but 
relative ; not good sense private, but good sense 
entertaining company. It hates corners and sharp 
points of character, hates quarrelsome, egotistical, 
solitary, and gloomy people ; hates whatever can 
interfere with total blending of parties ; whilst it 
values all peculiarities as in the highest degree 
refreshing, which can consist with good fellow- 
ship. And besides the general infusion of wit to 
heighten civility, the direct splendor of intellect- 
ual power is ever welcome in fine society as the 
costliest addition to its rule and its credit. 

The dry light must shine in to adorn our festi- 
val, but it must be tempered and shaded, or that 
will also offend. Accuracy is essential to beauty, 
and quick perceptions to politeness, but not too 
quick perceptions. One may be too punctual and 
too precise. He must leave the omniscience of 
business at the door, when he comes into the pal- 
ace of beauty. Society loves Creole natures, and 
sleepy, languishing manners, so that they cover 
sense, grace, and good-will ; the air of drowsy 
strength, which disarms criticism ; perhaps, be- 
cause such a person seems to reserve himself for 



MANNERS, 123 

the best of the game, and not spend himself on 
surfaces ; an ignoring eye, which does not see the 
annoyances, shifts, and inconveniences, that cloud 
the brow and smother the voice of the sensitive. 

Therefore, besides personal force and so much 
perception as constitutes unerring taste, society 
demands in its patrician class another element 
already intimated, which it significantly terms 
good-nature, expressing all degrees of generosity, 
from the lowest willingness and faculty to oblige, 
up to the heights of magnanimity and love. In- 
sight we must have, or we shall run against one 
another, and miss the way to our food ; but intel- 
lect is selfish and barren. The secret of success 
in society is a certain heartiness and sympathy. A 
man who is not happy in the company cannot find 
any word in his memory that will fit the occasion. 
All his information is a little impertinent. A man 
who is happy there finds in every turn of the 
conversation equally lucky occasions for the intro- 
duction of that which he has to say. The favor- 
ites of society, and what it calls whole soids, are 
able men, and of more spirit than wit, who have . 
no uncomfortable egotism, but who exactly fill the 
hour and the compauy, contented and contenting, 
at a marriage or a funeral, a ball or a jury, a water- - 
party or a shooting-match. England, which is rich 
in gentlemen, furnished, in the beginning of the 
present century, a good model of that genius 
which the world loves, in Mr. Fox, who added to 
his great abilities the most social disposition, and 
real love of men. Parliamentary history has few 



124 ESSAY IK 

better passages than the debate, in which Burke 
and Fox separated in the House of Commons ; 
when Fox urged on his old friend the claims of 
old friendship witli such tenderness, that the house 
was moved to tears. Another anecdote is so close 
to my matter, that I must hazard the story. A 
tradesman who had long dunned him for a note 
of three hundred guineas, found him one day 
counting gold, and demanded payment : " No," 
said Fox, " I owe this money to Sheridan : it is a 
debt of honor : if an accident should happen to 
me, he has nothing to show." " Then," said the 
creditor, '' I change my debt into a debt of honor," 
and tore the note in pieces. Fox thanked the 
man for his confidence, and paid him, saying, "his 
debt was of older standing, and Sheridan must 
wait." Lover of liberty, friend of the Hindoo, 
friend of the African slave, he possessed a great 
personal popularity ; and Napoleon said of him on 
the occasion of his visit to Paris, in 1805, " Mr. 
Fox will always hold the first place in an assem- 
bly at the Tuileries." 

We may easily seem ridiculous in our eulogy 
of courtesy, whenever we insist on benevolence as 
its foundation. The painted phantasm Fashion 
rises to cast a species of derision on what we say. 
But I will neither be driven from some allowance 
to Fashion as a symbolic institution, nor from the 
belief that love is the basis of courtesy. We 
must obtain that^ if we can ; but by all means we 
must affirm this. Life owes much of its spirit to 
these sharp contrasts. Fashion which affects to 



MANNERS. 125 

be honor is often, in all men's experience, only a 
ballroom code. Yet, so long as it is the highest 
circle, in the imagination of the best heads on 
the planet, there is something necessary and ex- 
cellent in it ; for it is not to be supposed that 
men have agreed to be the dupes of anything 
preposterous ; and the respect which these mys- 
teries inspire in the most rude and sylvan charac- 
ters, and the curiosity with which details of high 
life are read, betray the universality of the love 
of cultivated manners. I know that a comic dis- 
parity would be felt, if we should enter the ac- 
knowledged 'first circles,' and apply these terrific 
standards of justice, beauty, and benefit, to the 
individuals actually found there. Monarchs and 
heroes, sages and lovers, these gallants are not. 
Fashion has many classes and many rules of pro- 
bation and admission ; and not the best alone. 
There is not only the right of conquest, w^iich 
genius pretends,. — the individual, demonstrating 
his natural aristocracy best of the best ; — but less 
claims will pass for the time ; for Fashion loves 
lions, and points, like Circe, to her horned com- 
pany. This gentleman is this afternoon arrived 
from Denmark ; and that is my Lord Ride, who 
came yesterday from Bagdat ; here is Captain 
Friese, from Cape Turnagain ; and Captain 
Symmes, from the interior of the earth ; and 
Monsieur Jovaire, who came down this morning 
in a balloon ; Mr. Hobnail, the reformer ; and 
Reverend Jul Bat, who has converted the whole 
torrid zone in his Sunday school; and Signor 



126 ESSAY IK 

Torre del Greco, who extinguished Vesuvius by 
pouring into it the Bay of Naples ; Spahi, the 
Persian ambassador ; and Tul Wil Shan, the 
exiled nabob of Nepaul, whose saddle is the new 
moon. — But these are monsters of one day, and 
to-morrow will be dismissed to their holes and 
dens ; for, in these rooms, every chair is waited 
for. The artist, the scholar, and, in general, the 
clerisy, wins its way up into these places, and gets 
represented here, somewhat on this footing of 
conquest. Another mode is to pass through all 
the degrees, spending a year and a day in St. 
Michael's Square, being steeped in Cologne water, 
and perfumed, and dined, and introduced, and 
properly grounded in all the biography, and poli- 
tics, and anecdotes of the boudoirs. 

Yet these fineries may have grace and wit. 
Let there be grotesque sculpture about the gates 
and offices of temples. Let the creed and com- 
mandments even have the saucy homage of par- 
ody. The forms of politeness universally express 
benevolence in superlative degrees. What if they 
are in the mouths of selfish men, and used as 
means of selfishness ? What if the false gentle- 
man almost bows the true out of the world ? 
What if the false gentleman contrives so to ad= 
dress his companion, as civilly to exclude all 
others from his discourse, and also to make them 
feel excluded? Real service will not lose its 
nobleness. All generosity is not merely French 
and sentimental ; nor is it to be concealed, that 
living blood and a passion of kindness does at 



MANNERS. 127 

last distinguish God's gentleman from Fashion's. 
The epitaph of Sir Jenkin Grout is not wholly 
unintelligible to the present age. '' Here lies Sir 
Jenkin Grout, who loved his friend, and persuaded 
his eneni}^ : what his mouth ate, his hand paid 
for: what his servants robbed, he restored: if a 
woman gave him pleasure, he supported her in 
pain : he never forgot his children : and whoso 
touched his finger, drew after it his whole body." 
Even the line of heroes is not utterly extinct. 
There is still ever some admirable person in plain 
clothes, standing on the wharf, who jumps in to 
rescue a drowning man ; there is still some absurd 
inventor of charities; some guide and comforter 
of runaway slaves ; some friend of Poland; some 
Philhellene ; some fanatic who plants shade-trees 
for the second ajid third generation, and orchards 
when he is grown old ; some well-concealed piety ; 
some just man happy in an ill-fame; some youth 
ashamed of the favors of fortune, and impatiently 
casting them on other shoulders. And these are 
the centres of society, on which it returns for 
fresh impulses. These are the creators of Fash- 
ion, which is an attempt to organize beauty of 
behavior. The beautiful and the generous are, in 
the theory, the doctors and apostles of this church : 
Scipio, and the Cid, and Sir Philip Sidney, and 
Washington, and every pure and valiant heart, 
who worshipped Beauty by word and by deed. 
The persons who constitute the natural aristoc- 
racy are not found in the actual aristocracy, or, 
only on its edge ; as the chemical energy of the 



128 ESSAY IV. 

spectrum is found to be greatest just outside of 
the spectrum. Yet that is the infirmity of the 
seneschals, who do not know their sovereign, 
when he appears. The theory of society supposes 
the existence and sovereignty of these. It di- 
vines afar off their coming. It says with the elder 
gods, — 

" As Heaven and Earth are fairer far 
Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs ; 
And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth, 
In form and shape compact and beautiful; 
So, on our heels a fresh'perfection treads; 
A power, more strong in beauty, born of us, 
And fated to exoel us, as we pass 
In glory that old Darkness : ' 

for, 'tis the eternal law, 

That first in beauty shall be first in might." 

Therefore, within the ethnical circle of good 
society, there is a narrowel' and higher circle, con- 
centration of its light, and fiower of courtesy, to 
which there is always a tacit appeal of pride and 
reference, as to its inner and imperial court, the 
parliament of love and chivalry. And this is 
constituted of those persons in whom heroic dis- 
positions are native, with the love of beauty, the 
delight in society, and the power to embellish the 
passing day. If the individuals who compose tlie 
purest circles of aristocracy in Europe, the guarded' 
blood of centuries, should pass in review, in such 
manner as that we could, at leisure, and critically 
inspect their behavior, we might find no gentle- 
man, and no lad}^ ; for, although excellent speci- 
mens of courtesy and high-breeding would gratify 



MANNERS. 129 

-as in the assemblage, in the particulars we should 
detect offence. Because, elegance comes of no 
breeding, but of birth. There must be romance 
of character, or the most fastidious exclusion of 
impertinencies will not avail. It must be genius 
which takes that direction : it must be not cour- 
teous, but courtes}^. High behavior is as rare in 
fiction as it is in fact. Scott is praised for the 
fidelity with which he painted the demeanor and 
conversation of the superior classes. Certainly, 
kings and queens, nobles and great ladies, had 
some right to complain of the absurdity that had 
been put in their mouths, before the days of 
Waverly ; but neither does Scott's dialogue bear 
criticism. His lords brave each other in smart epi- 
grammatic speeches, but the dialogue is in 
costume, and does not please on the second read- 
ing : it is not warm with life. In Shakespeare 
alone, the speakers do not strut and bridle, the 
dialogue is easily great, and he adds to so many 
titles that of being the best-bred man in England, 
and in Christendom. Once or twice in a life-time 
we are permitted to enjoy the charm of noble 
manners, in the presence of a man or woman who 
have no bar in their nature, but whose character 
emanates freely in their word and gesture. A 
beautiful form is better than a beautiful face ; a 
beautiful behavior is better than a beautiful form : 
it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures : 
it is the finest of the fine arts. A man is but a 
little thing in the midst of the objects of nature, 
yet, by the moral qnality radiating from his 
E 



I30 ESSAY IV. 

countenance, he may abolish all considerations of 
magnitude, and in his manners equal the majesty 
of the world. I have seen an individual, whose 
manners, though wholly within the conventions of 
elegant society, were never learned there, but 
were original and commanding, and held out pro- 
tection and prosperity ; one who did not need the 
aid of a court-suit, but carried the holiday in his 
eye ; who exhilarated the fancy by flinging wide 
the doors of new modes of existence ; who shook 
off the captivity of etiquette, with happy, spirited 
bearing, good-natured and free as Robin Hood; 
yet with the port of an emperor, — if need be, 
calm, serious, and fit to stand the gaze of millions. 
The open air and the fields, the street and 
public chambers, are the places where Man exe- 
cutes his will ; let him yield or divide the sceptre 
at the door of the house. Woman, with her 
instinct of behavior, instantly detects in man a 
love of trifles, any coldness or imbecility, or, in 
short, any want of that large, flowing, and mag- 
nanimous deportment, which is indispens-able as 
an exterior in the hall. Our American institu- 
tions have been friendly to her, and at this 
moment I esteem it a chief felicity of this country, 
that it excels in women. A certain awkward 
consciousness of inferiority in the men may give 
rise to the new chivalry in behalf of Woman's 
Rights. Certainly, let her be as much better 
placed in the laws and in social forms as the most 
zealous reformer can ask, but I confide so entirely 
in her inspiring and musical nature, that I believe 



MANNERS, 131 

only herself can show us how she shall be served. 
The wonderful generosity of her sentiments raises 
her at times into heroical and godlike regions, and 
verifies the pictures of Minerva, Juno, or Polym- 
nia; and, by the firmness with which she treads 
her upward path, she convinces the coarsest cal- 
culators that another road exists, than that which 
their feet know. But besides those who make 
good in our imagination the place of muses and of 
Delphic Sibyls, are there not women who fill our 
vase with wine and roses to the brim, so that the 
wine runs over and fills the house with perfume ; 
who inspire us with courtesy ; who unloose our 
tongues, and we speak ; who anoint our eyes, and 
we see ? We say things we never thought to 
have said; for once, our walls of habitual reserve 
vanished, and left us at large ; we were children 
playing with children in a wide field of flowers. 
Steep us, we cried, in these influences, for days, 
for weeks, and we shall be sunny poets, and will 
write out in many-colored words the romance that 
you are. Was it Hafiz or Firdousi that said of 
his Persian Lilla, She was an elemental force, and 
astonished me by her amount of life, when I saw 
her day after day radiating, every instant, redun- 
dant joy and grace on all around her. She was a 
solvent powerful to reconcile all heterogeneous 
persons into one society : like air or water, an ele- 
ment of such a great range of affinities, that it 
combhies readily with a thousand substances. 
Where she is present, all others will be more than 
they are wont. She was a unit and whole, so 



132 ESSAY IK 

that whatsoever she did, became her. She had too 
much sympathy and desire to please, than that you 
could say, her manners were marked with dignity; 
yet no princess could surpass her clear and erect 
demeanor on each occasion. She did not study 
the Persian grammar, nor the books of the seven 
poets, but all the poems of the seven seemed to 
be written upon her. For, though the bias of her 
nature was not to thought, but to sympathy, 
yet was she so perfect in her own nature, as to 
meet intellectual persons by the fulness of her 
heart, warming them by her sentiments ; believ- 
ing, as she did, that by dealing nobly with all, all 
would show themselves noble. 

I know that this Byzantine pile of chivalry or 
Fashion, which seems so fair and picturesque to 
those who look at the contemporary facts for 
science or for entertainment, is not equally pleas- 
ant to all spectators. The constitution of our 
society makes it a giant's castle to the ambitious 
youth who have not found their names enrolled in 
its Golden Book, and whom it has excluded from 
its coveted honors and privileges. They have yet 
to learn that its seeming grandeur is shadowy and 
relative: it is great by their allowance : its proud- . 
est gates will fly open at the approach of their 
courage and virtue. For the present distress, how- 
ever, of those who are predisposed to suffer from 
the tyrannies of this caprice, there are easy reme- 
dies. To remove your residence a couple of 
miles, or at most four, will commonly relieve the 



MANNERS. 133 

most extreme susceptibility. For, the advantages 
which fashion values are plants which thrive in 
very confined localities, in a few streets, namely. 
Out of this precinct, they go for nothing; are of 
no use in the farm, in the forest, in the market, in 
war, in the nuptial society, in the literary or 
scientific circle, at sea, in friendship, in the heaven* 
of thought or virtue. 

But we have lingered long enough in these 
painted courts. The worth of the thing signified 
must vindicate our taste for the emblem. Every- 
thing that is called fashion and courtesy humbles 
itself before the cause and fountain of honor, 
creator of titles and dignities, namely, the heart 
of love. This is the royal blood, this the fire,, 
which, in all countries and contingencies, will 
work after its kind, and conquer and expand all 
that approaches it. This gives new meanings ta 
every fact. This impoverishes the rich, suffering 
no grandeur but its own. What zsrich? Are 
you rich enough to help anybody ? to succor the 
unfashionable and the eccentric ? rich enough ta 
make the Canadian in his wagon, the itinerant with 
his consul's paper which commends him " To the 
charitable," the swarthy Italian with his few 
broken words of English, the lame pauper hunted 
by overseers from town to town, even the poor in- 
sane or besotted wreck of man or woman, feel the 
noble exception of your presence and your house, 
from the general bleakness andstoniness ; to make 
such feel that they were greeted with a voice 
w^hich made them both remember and hope? 



134 ESSAY IV. 

What is vulgar, but to refuse the claim on acute 
and conclusive reasons? What is gentle, but to 
allow it, and give their heart and yours one holi- 
day from the national caution ? Without the rich 
heart, wealth is an ugly beggar. The king of 
Schiraz could not afford to be so bountiful as 
the poor Osman who dwelt at his gate. Os- 
man had a humanity so broad and deep, 
that although his speech was so bold and free 
with the Koran, as to disgust all the dervishes, 
yet was there never a poor outcast, eccentric, or 
insane man, some fool who had cut off his beard, 
or who had been mutilated under a vow, or had a 
pet madness in his biain, but fled at once to him, 
-that great heart lay there so sunny and hospit- 
able in the centre of the C(iuntry, — that it seemed 
as if the instinct of all sufferers drew them to his 
side. And the madness which he harbored, he 
did not share. Is not this to be rich ? this only 
to be rightly rich ? 

But I shall hear without pain, that I play the 
courtier very ill, and talk of that which I do not 
well understand. It is easy to see, that what is 
called by distinction society and fashion, has good 
laws as well as bad, has much that is necessary, 
and much that is absurd. Too good for banning, 
and too bad for blessing, it reminds us of a tradi- 
tion of the pagan mythology, in any attempt to 
settle its character. ' I overheard Jove, one day,' 
said Silenus, ' talking of destroying the earth ; 
he said, it had failed ; they were all rogues and 
vixens, who went from bad to worse, as fast as the 



MANNERS. 135 

days succeeded each other. Minerva said, she hoped 
not ; they were only ridiculous little creatures, 
with this odd circumstance, that they had a blur, 
or indeterminate aspect, seen far or seen near ; if 
you called them bad, they would appear so ; if 
you called them good, they would appear so ; and 
there was no one person or action among them, 
which would not puzzle her owl, much more all 
Olympus, to know whether it was fundamentally 
bad or good.* 



GIFTS. 



Gifts of one who loved me,— 
'T was high time they came ; 
When he ceased to love me, 
Tim© they stopped for shamo 



GIFTS. 



It is said that the world is in a state of bank- 
ruptcy, that the world owes the world more than 
the world can pay, and ought to go into chancery, 
and be sold. I do not think this general insolv- 
ency, which involves in some sort all the popula- 
tion, to be the reason of the difficulty experienced 
at Christmas and New Year, and other times, in 
bestowing gifts ; since it is always so pleasant to 
be generous, though very vexatious to pay debts. 
But the impediment lies in the choosing. If, at 
any time, it comes into my head, that a present is 
due from me to somebody, I am puzzled what to 
give, until the opportunity is gone.'" ^^^s and 
fruits are all fit presents ; flowers, because they 
are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty out- 
values all the utilities of the world. These gay 
natures contrast with the somewhat stern counte- 
nance of ordinary nature : they are like music 
heard out of a work-house. Nature does not cocker 
us: we are children, not pets: she is not fond : 
everything is dealt to us without fear or favor, 
after severe universal laws. Yet these delicate 
flowers look like the frolic and interference of 

(139) 



140 ESSAY V. 

love and beauty. Men use to tell us that we 
love flattery, even though we are not deceived 
by it, because it shows that we are of importance 
enough to be courted. Soniething like that 
pleasure the flowers give us : what am I to whom 
these sweet hints are addressed V Fruits are ac- 
ceptable gifts, because they are the flower of com- 
modities, and admit of fantastic values being at- 
tached to them .»i If a man should send to me to 
come a hun"dred miles to visit him, and should 
set before me a basket of fine summer-fruit, I 
should think there was some proportion between 
the labor and the reward. 

v^ 5jpr common gifts, necessity makes pertinence^ 
and beauty every day, and one is "glad when 
an imperative leaves him no option, since if the 
man at the door have no shoes, you have not to 
consider whether you could procure him a paint- 
box. ' And as it is always pleasing to see a man 
eat bread, or drink water, in the house or out of 
doors, so it is always a great satisfaction to supply 
these first wants.y Necessit y does everything 
well. In our'^^Moilion of universal dependence, 
it seems heroic to let the petitioner be the judge 
of his necessity, and to give all that is asked, 
though at great inconvenience. If it be a fantas- 
tic desire, it is better to leave to others the office 
of punishing him. I can think of many parts 
I should prefer playing to that of the Furies. 
V^jKText to things of necessity, the rule for a gift, 
which one of my friends prescribed, is, that we 
might convey to some person that which properly 



GIFTS. 141 

belonged to his character, and was easily associated 
with him in thought. But our tokens of compli- 
ment and love are for the most part barbarous. 
Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies 
for gifts. Xll^ oi^iy gift is a portion of thyself, ^^' 
Thou must bleed for me. * therefore tEe poet 
brings his poem ; the shepherd, his~lamb ; the 
farmer, corn ; the miner, a gem ; the sailor, coral 
and shells; the painter, his picture; the girl, a 
handkerchief of her own sewing. This is right 
and pleasing, for it restores society in so far to 
its primary basis, when a man's biography is con- 
veyed in his gift, and every man's wealth is an 
index of his merit.f " Bii^ it is a cold, lifeless busi- 
ness when ynu go 16 the shops to buy me some- 
thing, which does not represent your life and tal- 
ent, but a goldsmith's. This is fit for kings, and 
rich men who represent kings, and a false state of 
property, to make presents of gold and silver 
stuffs, as a kind of symbolical sin-offering, or pay- 
ment of black- mail. * / 

The law of ^neiits is a difficult channel, which 
requires careful sailing, or rucle boats. It is not 
the office of a man to receive gifts. How dare 
you-^give them? We wish to be self-sustained. 
' j |We " do not quite forgive a g^iver. ' The hand that 
reeds^us is in some danger of being bitten.v We 
can receive anything from love, for that is a way 
of receiving it from ourselves ; but not from any 
one who assumes to bestow. ^AVe sometimes hate 
the meat which we eat, becaus^tliere seems some- 
thing of degrading dependence in living by it. 



142 ESSAY V. 

** Brother, if Jove to thee a present make, 
Take heed that from his hands thou nothing take." 

We ask the whole. Nothing less will content us. 
We arraign society, if it do not give us besides 
. earth, and fire, and water, opportunity, love, rev- 
erence, and objects of veneration. 
^\He is a good man who can receive a gift well. 
We are either glad or sorry at a gift, and both 
emotions are unbeconiing/^ Some violence, I 
think, is done, some degradation borne, when I 
rejoice or grieve at a gift. ' ' I am sorry when my 
independence is invaded, or when a gift comes 
from such as do not know my spirit, and so the 
act is not supported ; and if the gift pleases me 
overmuch, then I should be ashamed that the 
donor should read my heart, and see that I love 
his commodity, and not him/f The gift, to be 
true, must be the flowing of the gi\^er unto me, 
correspondent to my flowing unto hipi. When 
the waters are at level, then my goods pass to 
him, and his to me. All his are mine, all mine 
his. I say to him. How can you give me this pot 
of oil, or this flagon of wine, when all your oil 
and wine is mine, which belief of mine this gift 
seems to deny ? Hence the fitness of beautiful, 
not useful things for gifts. This giving is flat 
usurpation, and therefore when the beneficiary is 
ungrateful, as all beneficiaries hate all Timons, 
not at all considering the value of the gift, but 
lookiug back to the greater store it was taken 
from, I rather sympathize with the beneficiary, 
than with the anger of my lord Timon. For, the 



GIFTS. 143 

expectation of gratitude is mean, and is continu- 
ally punished by the total insensibility of the 
obliged person. It is a great happiness to get off 
without; injury and heart-burning, from one who 
has had the ill luck to be served by you. It is a 
very onerous business, this of being served, and 
the debtor naturally wishes to give you a slap. A 
golden text for these gentlemen is that which I so 
admire in the Buddhist, who never thanks, and 
who says, " Do not flatter your benefactors." 

The reason of these discords I conceive to be> 
that there is no commensurability between a man 
and any gift. You cannot give anything to a 
magnanimous person. After you have served 
him, he at once puts you in debt by his magnanim- 
ity. The service a man renders his friend is 
trivial and selfish, compared with the service he 
knows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, 
alike before he had begun to serve his friend, and 
now also. Compared with that good-will I bear 
my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render 
him seems small. Besides, our action on each 
other, good as well as evil, is so incidental and at 
random that we can seldom hear the acknowledg- 
ments of any person who would thank us for a 
benefit, without some shame and humiliation. We 
can rarely strike a direct stroke, but must be 
content with an oblique one ; we seldom have the 
satisfaction of yielding a direct benefit, which is 
directly received. But rectitude scatters favors 
on every side without knowing it, and receives 
with wonder the thanks of all people. 



144 ESSAY V. 

I fear to breathe any treason against the majesty 
of love, which is the genius and god of gifts, and 
to whom we must not affect to prescribe. Let 
him give kingdoms or flower-leaves indifferently. 
There are persons from whom we always expect 
fairy tokens ; let us not cease to expect them. 
This is prerogative, and not to be limited by our 
municipal rules. For the rest, I like to see that 
we cannot be bought and sold. The best of 
hospitality and of generosity is also not in the 
will, but in fate. I find that I am not much to 
you ; you do not need me ; you do not feel me ; 
then am I thrust out of doors, though you proffer 
me house and lands. No services are of any 
value, but only likeness. When I have attempted 
to join myself to others by services, it proved an 
intellectual trick, — no more. They eat your serv- 
ice like apples, and leave you out. But love 
them, and they feel you, and delight in you all 
the time. 



NATURE. 



The rounded world is fair to see, 

Nine times folded in mystery : 

Though baffled seers cannot impart 

The secret of its laboring heart, 

Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast, 

And all is clear from east to west. 

Spirit that lurks each form within 

Beckons to spirit of its kin ; 

Self-kindled every atom glows, 

And hints the future which it owes. 



31 



NATURE. 



Thejie are days which occur in this climate, at 
ahiiost any season of the year, wherein the world 
reaches its perfection, when the air, the heavenly 
bodies, and the earth, make a harmony, as if nature 
would indulge her offspring ; when, in these bleak 
upper sides of the planet, nothing is to desire that 
we have heard of the happiest latitudes, and we 
bask in the shining hours of Florida and Cuba; 
when everything that has life gives sign of satis- 
faction, and the cattle that lie on the ground seem 
to have great and tranquil thoughts. These 
halcyons may be looked for with a little more as- 
surance in that pure October weather, which we 
distinguish by the name of the Indian Summer. 
The day, immeasurably long, sleeps over the 
broad hills and warm wide fields. To have lived 
through all its sunny hours, seems longevity 
enough. The solitary places do not seem quite 
lonely. At the gates of the forest, the surprised 
man of the world is forced to leave his city 
estimates of great and small, wise and foolish. 
The knapsack of custom falls off his back with the 

(U7) 



148 ESSAY VI. 

first step he makes into these precincts. Here is 
sanctity which shames our religions, and reality 
which discredits our heroes. Here we find nature 
to be the circumstance which dwarfs every other 
circumstance, and judges like a god all men that 
come to her. We have crept out of our close and 
crowded houses mt'i the ni^ht and morning, and 
we see what majestic beauties daily wrap us in 
their bosom. How willingly we would escape the 
barriers which render them comparatively im- 
potent, escape the sophistication and second 
thought, and suffer nature to in trance us. The 
tempered light of the woods is like a perpetual 
morning, and is stimulating and heroic. The 
anciently reported spells of these places creep on 
us. The stems of pines, hemlocks, and oaks 
almost gleam like iron on the excited eye. The 
incommunicable trees begin to persuade us to live 
with them, and quit our life of solemn trifles. 
Here no history, or church, or state, is interpo- 
lated on the divine sky and the immortal year. 
How easily we might walk onward into the open- 
ing landscape, absorbed by new pictures, and by 
thoughts fast succeeding each other, until by de- 
grees the recollection of home was crowded out of 
the mind, all memory obliterated by the tyranny 
of the present, and we were led in triumph by 
nature. 

These enchantments are medicinal, they sober 
and heal us. These are plain pleasures, kindly 
and native to us. We come to our own, and 
make friends with matter, which the ambitious 



NATURE. 149 

chatter of the schools would persuade us to de- 
spise. We never can part with it ; the mind loves 
its old home : as water to our thirst, so is the 
rock, the ground, to our eyes, and hands, and feet. 
It is firm water : it is cold flame : what health, 
what affinity! Ever an old friend, ever like a 
dear friend and brother, when we chat affectedly 
with strangers, comes in this honest face, and 
takes a grave liberty with us, and shames us out 
of our nonsense. Cities give not the human senses 
room enough. We go out daily and nightly to 
feed the eyes on the horizon, and require so much 
scope, just as we need water for our bath. There 
are all degrees of natural influence, from these 
quarantine powers of nature, up to her dearest 
and gravest ministrations to the imagination and 
the soul. There is the bucket of cold water from 
the spring, the wood -fire to which the chilled 
traveler rushes for safety, — and there is the sab- 
lime moral of autumn and of noon. We nestle in 
nature, and draw our living as parasities from her 
roots and grains, and we receive glances from the 
heavenly bodies, which call us to solitude, and 
foretell the remotest future. The blue zenith is 
the point in which romance and reality meet. I 
tliink, if we should be rapt away into all that we 
dream of heaven, and should converse with 
Gabriel and Uriel, the upper sky would be all that 
would remain of our furniture. 

It seems as if the day was not wholly profane, 
in which we have given heed to some natural ob- 
ject. The fall of snowflakes in a still air, preserv- 



I50 ESSAY VI. 

ing to each crystal its perfect form ; the blowing 
of sleet over a wide sheet of water, and over plains, 
the waving rye-field, the mimic waving of acres of 
houstonia, whose innumerable florets whiten and 
ripple before the eye ; the reflections of trees and 
flowers in glassy lakes ; the musical, steaming 
odorous south wind, which converts all trees to 
windharps; the crackling and spurting of hem- 
lock in the flames ; or of pine logs, which yield 
glory to the walls and faces in the sittingroom, 
— these are the music and pictures of the most 
ancient religion. My house stands in low land, 
with limited outlook, and on the skirt of the vil- 
lage. But I go with my friend to the shore of 
our little river, and with one stroke of the paddle, 
I leave the village politics and personalities, yes, 
and the world of villages and personalities behind, 
and pass into a delicate realm of sunset and moon- 
light, too bright almost for spotted man to enter 
without novitiate and probation. We penetrate 
bodily this incredible beauty : we dip our hands in 
this painted element : our eyes are bathed in these 
lights and forms. A holiday, a villeggiatura, a 
royal revel, the proudest, most heart-rejoicing 
festival that valor and beauty, power and taste, 
ever decked and enjoyed, establishes itself on the 
instant. These sunset clouds, these delicately 
emerging stars, with their private and ineffable 
glances, signify it and proffer it. I am taught 
the poorness of our invention, the ugliness of 
towns and palaces. Art and luxury have early 
learned that they must work as enhancement and 



NATURE. 151 

sequel to this original beauty. I am overin- 
structed for my return. Henceforth I shall be 
hard to please. I cannot go back to toys. I am 
grown expensive and sophisticated. I can no 
longer live without elegance : but a countryman 
shall be my master of revels. He who knows the 
most, he who knows what sweets and virtues are 
in the ground, the waters, the plants, the heavens, 
and how to come at these enchantments, is the 
rich and royal man. Only as far as the masters 
of the world have called in nature to their aid, can 
they reach the height of magnificence. This is the 
meaning of their hanging-gardens, villas, garden- 
houses, islands, parks, and preserves, to back their 
faulty personality with these strong accessories. I 
do not wonder that the landed interest should be 
invincible in the state with these dangerous 
auxiliaries. These bribe and invite ; not kings, 
not palaces, not men, not women, but these tender 
and poetic stars, eloquent of secret promises. We 
heard what the rich man said, we knew of his 
villa, his grove, his wine, and his company, but the 
provocation and point of the invitation came out 
of these beguiling stars. In their soft glances, I 
see what men strove to realize in some Versailles 
or Paphos, or Ctesiphon. Indeed, it is the magi 
cal lights of the horizon, and the blue sky for 
the background, which save all our works of art, 
which were otherwise bawbles. When the rich 
tax the poor with servility and obsequiousness, 
they should consider the effect of men reputed to 
be the possessors of nature, on imaginative minds. 



152 ESSAY VL 

All ! if the rich were rich as the poor fancy 
riches ! A boy hears a military band play on 
the field at night, and he has kings and queens, 
and famous chivalry palpabl}^ before him. He 
hears the echoes of a horn in a hill country, in the 
Notch Mountains, for example, which converts 
the mountains into an ^olian harp, and this super- 
natural tiralira restores to him the Dorian mj- thol- 
ogy, Apollo, Diana, and all the divine hunters and 
huntresses. Can a musical note be so lofty, so 
haughtily beautiful ! To the poor young poet, 
thus fabulous in his picture of society : he is loyal ; 
he respects the rich ; they are rich for the sake of 
his imagination ; how poor his fancy would be, if 
they were not rich ! That they have some high- 
fenced grove, which they call a park ; that they 
live in larger and better-garnished saloons than 
he has visited, and go in coaches, keeping only 
the society of the elegant, to watering-places, and 
to distant cities, are the ground-work from which 
he has delineated estates of romance, compared 
with which their actual possessions are shanties 
and paddocks. The muse herself betrays her son, 
and enhances the gifts of wealth and well-born 
beauty, by a radiation out of the air, and clouds, 
and forests that skirt the road, — a certain haughty 
favor, as if from patrician genii to patricians, a 
kind of aristocracy in nature, a prince of the 
power of the air. 

The moral sensibility which makes Edens and 
Tempes so easily, may not be always found, but 
the material landscape is never far off. We can 



NATURE. 153 

find these enchantments without visiting the Como 
Lake, or the Madeira Islands. We exaggerate the 
praises of local scenery. In every landscape, the 
point of astonishment is the meeting of the sky 
and the earth, and that is seen from the first hill- 
ock as well as from the top of the Alleghanies. 
The stars at night stoop down over the brownest, 
homeliest common, with all the spiritual magnifi- 
cence which they shed on the Campagna, or on 
the marble deserts of Egypt. The uprolled clouds 
and the colors of morning and evening will trans- 
figure maples and alders. The difference between 
landscape and landscape is small, but there is great 
difference in the beholders. There is nothing so 
wonderful in any particular landscape, as the 
necessity of being beautiful under which every 
landscape lies. Nature cannot be surprised in un- 
dress. Beauty breaks in everywhere. 

But it is very easy to outrun the sympathy of 
readers on this topic, which schoolmen called 
natura natiirata^ or nature passive. One can 
hardly speak directly of it without excess. It is 
as easy to broach in mixed companies what is 
called " the subject of religion." A susceptible 
person does not like to indulge his tastes in this 
kind, without the apology of some trivial neces- 
sity : he goes to see a woodlot, or to look at the 
crops, or to fetch a plant or a mineral from a re- 
mote locality, or he carries a fowling piece, or a 
fishing-rod. I suppose this shame must have a 
good reason. A dilettantism in nature is barren 
and unworthy. The fop of fields is no better than 



154 ESSAV VI, 

his brother of Broadway. Men are naturall;^ 
hunters and inquisitive of wood-craft, and I sup- 
pose that such a gazetteer as wood-cutters and 
Indians should furnish facts for, would take place 
in the most sumptuous drawingrooms of all the 
'■' Wreaths " and " Flora's chaplets " of the book- 
shops ; yet ordinarily, whether we are too clumsy 
for so subtle a topic, or from whatever cause, as 
soon as men begin to write on nature, they fall 
into euphuism. Frivolity is a most unfit tribute 
to Pan, who ought to be represented in the my- 
thology as the most continent of gods. I would 
not be frivolous before the admirable reserve and 
prudence of time, yet I cannot renounce the right 
of returning often to this old topic. The multi- 
tude of false churches accredits the true religion. 
Literature, poetry, science are the homage of man 
to this unfathomed secret, concerning which no 
sane man can affect an indifference or incuriosity. 
Nature is loved by what is best in us. It is loved 
as the city of God, although, or rather because 
there is no citizen. The sunset is unlike anything 
that is underneath it: it wants men. And the 
beauty of nature must always seem unreal and 
mocking, until the landscape has human figures, 
that are as good as itself. If there were good 
men, there would never be this rapture in nature. 
If the king is in the palace, nobody looks at the 
walls. It is when he is gone, and the house is 
filled with grooms and gazers, that we turn from 
the people, to find relief in the majestic men that 
are suggested by the pictures and the architecture. 



NATURE. 155 

The critics who complain of the sickly separation 
of the beauty of nature from the thing to be done, 
must consider that our hunting of the picturesque 
is inseparable from our protest against false so- 
ciety. Man is fallen; nature is erect, and serves 
as a differential thermometer, detecting the pres- 
ence or absence of the divine sentiment in man. 
By fault of our dulness and selfishness, we are 
looking up to nature, but when we are convales- 
cent, nature will look up to us. We see the foam- 
ing brook with compunction: if our own life 
flowed with the right energy, we should shame 
the brook. The stream of zeal sparkles with real 
fire, and not with reflex rays of sun and moon. 
Nature may be as selfishly studied as trade. 
Astronomy to the selfish becomes astrology ; psy- 
chology, mesmerism (with intent to show wliere 
our spoons are gone) ; and anatomy and physi- 
ology, become phrenology and palmistry. 

But taking timely warning, and leaving many 
things unsaid on this topic, let us not longer omit our 
homage to the Efficient Nature, natura naturans, 
the quick cause, before which all forms flee as the 
driven snows, itself secret, its works driven before 
it in flocks and multitudes (as the ancient repre- 
sented nature by Proteus, a shepherd), and in un- 
describable variety. It publishes itself in creat- 
ures, reaching from particles and spicula, through 
transformation on transformation to the highest 
symmetries, arriving at consummate results with- 
out a shock or a leap. A little heat, that is, a 
little motion, is all that differences the bald, daz- 



156 ESSAY VL 

zliiig white, and deadly cold poles of the earth 
from the prolific tropical climates. All changes 
pass without violence, by reason of the two car- 
dinal conditions of boundless space and boundless 
time. Geology has initiated us into the secularity 
of nature, and taught us to disuse our dame- 
school measures, and exchange our Mosaic and 
Ptolemaic schemes for her large style. We knew 
nothing rightly, for want of perspective. Now 
we learn what patient periods must round them- 
selves before the rock is formed, then before the 
K-ock is broken, and the first lichen race has dis- 
integrated the thinnest external plate into soil, and 
opened the door for the remote Flora, Fauna, 
Ceres, and Pomona, to come in. How far off yet 
is the trilobite ! how far the quadruped ! how in- 
conceivably remote is man ! All duly arrive, and 
then race after race of men. It is a long way 
from granite to the oj^ster ; farther yet to Plato, 
and the preaching of the immortality of the soul. 
Yet all must come, as surely as the first atom has 
two sides. 

Motion or change, and identity or rest, are the 
first and second secrets of nature : Motion and 
Rest. The whole code of her laws may be writ- 
ten on the thumbnail, or the signet of a ring. 
The whirling bubble on the surface of a brook 
admits us to the secret of the mechanics of the 
sky. Every shell on the beach is a key to it. A 
little water made to rotate in a cup explains the 
formation of the simpler shells; the addition of 
matter from year to year, arrives at last at the 



NATURE, 157 

most complex forms ; and yet so poor is nature 
with all her craft, that, from the beginning to the 
end of the universe, she has but one stuff, — but one 
stuff with its two ends, to serve up all her dream- 
like variety. Compound it how she will, star, 
sand, fire, water, tree, man, it is still one stuff, and 
betrays the same properties. 

Nature is always consistent, though she feigns 
to contravene her own laws. She keeps her laws, 
and seems to transcend them. She arms and 
equips an animal to find its place and living in 
the earth, and, at the same time, she arms and 
equips another animal to destroy it. Space exists 
to divide creatures ; but by clothing the sides of 
a bird with a few feathers, she gives him a petty 
omnipresence. The direction is forever onward, 
but the artist still goes back for materials, and be- 
gins again with the first elements on the most ad- 
vanced stage : otherwise, all goes to ruin. If we 
look at her work, we seem to catch a glance of a 
system in transition. Plants are the young of 
the world, vessels of health and vigor ; but they 
grope ever upward towards consciousness ; the 
trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their 
imprisonment, rooted in the ground. The animal 
is the novice and probationer of a more advanced 
order. The men, though young, having tasted the 
first drop from the cup of thought, are already dissi- 
pated: the maples and ferns are still uncorrupt; yet 
no doubt, when they come to consciousness, they 
too will curse and swear. Flowers so strictly belong 
to youth, that we adult men soon come to feel 



158 ESSAY VI. 

that their beautiful generations concern not us: 
we have had our day ; now let the children have 
theirs. The flowers jilt us, and we are old bache- 
lors with our ridiculous tenderness. 

Things are so strictly related, that according to 
the skill of the eye, from any one object the parts 
and properties of any other may be predicted. 
If we had eyes to see it, a bit of stone from the 
city wall would certify us of the necessity that 
man must exist, as readily as the city. That iden- 
tity makes us all one, and reduces to nothing great 
intervals on our customary scale. We talk of 
deviations from natural life, as if artificial life 
were not also natural. The smoothest curled 
courtier in the boudoirs of a palace has an animal 
nature, rude and aboriginal as a white bear, omnip- 
otent to its own ends, and is directly related, there 
amid essences and billetdoux, to Himmaleh mount- 
ain-chains, and the axis of the globe. If we 
consider how much we are nature's, we need not 
be superstitious about towns, as if that terrific or 
benefic force did not find us there also, and fash- 
ion cities. Nature, who made the mason, made the 
house. We may easily hear too much of rural 
influences. The cool, disengaged air of natural 
objects makes them enviable to us, chafed and ir- 
ritable creatures with red faces, and we think we 
shall be as grand as they, if we camp out and eat 
roots ; but let us be men instead of wood-chucks, 
and the oak and the elm shall gladly serve us, 
though we sit in chairs of ivory on carpets of 
silk. 



NATURE. 159 

This guiding identity runs through all the sur- 
prises and contrasts of the piece, and character- 
izes every law. Man carries the world in his head, 
the whole astronomy and chemistry suspended in 
a thought. Because the history of nature is char- 
actered in his brain, therefore is he the prophet 
and discoverer of her secrets. Every known fact 
in natural science was divined by the presenti- 
ment of somebody, before it was actually verified. 
A man does not tie his shoe without recognizing 
laws which bind the farthest regions of nature : 
moon, plant, gas, crystal are concrete geometry 
and numbers. Common sense knows its own, and 
recognizes the fact at first sight in chemical exper- 
iment. The common sense of Franklin, Dalton, 
Davy, and Black is the same common sense which 
made the arrangements which now it discovers. 

If the identity expresses organized rest, the 
counter-action runs also into organization. The 
astronomers said, ' Give us matter, and a little 
motion^ and we will construct the universe. It is 
not enough that we should have matter, we must 
also have a single impulse, one shove to launch 
the mass, and generate the harmony of the centrif- 
ugal and centripetal forces. Ouce heave the ball 
^from the hand, and we can show how all this 
mighty order grew.' — ' A very unreasonable pos- 
tulate,' said the metaphysicians, ' and a plain beg- 
ging of the question Could you not prevail to 
know the genesis of projection, as well as the con- 
tinuation of it?' Nature, meanwhile, had not 
waited for the discussion, but, right or wrong, be- 



l60 FSSAV VI . 

stowed the impulse, and the balls rolled. It was 
no great affair, a mere push, but the astronomers 
were right in making much of it, for there is no 
end to the consequences of the act. That fa- 
mous aboriginal push propagates itself through all 
the balls of the system, and through every atom 
of every ball, through all the races of creatures, 
and through the history and performances of every 
individual. Exaggeration is in the course of 
things. Nature sends no creature, no man into 
the world, without adding a small excess of 
his proper quality. Given the planet, it is still 
necessary to add the impulse ; so, to every creat- 
ure nature added a little violence of direction in 
its proper path, a shove to put it on its way ; in 
every instance, a slight generosity, a drop too 
much. Without electricit}^ the air woulcl rot^ 
and without this violence of direction, which men 
and women have, without a spice of bigot and fa- 
natic, no excitement, no efficiency. We aim above 
the mark, to hit the mark. Every act hath some 
falsehood of exaggeration in it. And when now 
and then comes along some sad, sharp-eyed man, 
who sees how paltry a game is played, and refuses 
to play, but blabs the secret ; — how then ? is the 
bird flown ? O no, the wary Nature sends a new 
troop of fairer forms, of lordlier youths, with a 
little more excess of direction to hold them fast 
to their several aim ; makes them a little wrong- 
headed in that direction in which the}^ are right- 
est, and on goes the game again wdth new whirl, 
for a generation or two more. The child with his 



NATURE. l6l 

sweet pranks, the fool of his senses, commanded by 
every sight and sound, without any power to com- 
pare and rank his sensations, abandoned to a whis- 
tle or a painted chip, to a lead dragoon, or a ginger- 
bread-dog, individualizing everything, generalizing 
nothing, delighted with every new thing, lies 
down at night overpowered by the fatigue, which 
this day of continual pretty madness has incurred. 
But Nature has answered her purpose with the 
curly, dimpled lunatic. She has tasked every 
faculty, and has secured the symmetrical growth 
of the bodily frame, by all these attitudes and 
exertions, — an end of the first importance, which 
could not be trusted to any care less perfect than 
her own. This glitter, this opaline lustre plaj^s 
round the top of every toy to his eye, to ensure 
his fidelity, and he is deceived to his good. We 
are made alive and kept alive by the same arts. 
Let the stoics say what they please, we do not eat 
for the good of living, but because the meat is 
savory and the appetite is keen. The vegetable 
life does not content itself with casting from the 
flower or the tree a single seed, but it fills the air 
and earth with a prodigalit}^ of seeds, that, if 
thousands perish, thousands may plant themselves, 
that hundreds may come up, that tens may live to 
maturity, that, at least, one may replace the par- 
ent. All things betray the same calculated pro- 
fusion. The excess of fear with which the animal 
frame is hedged round, shrinking from cold, start- 
ing at sight of a snake, or at a sudden noise, pro- 
tects us, through a multitude of groundless alarms, 
F 



l62 ESSAY VI. 

from some one real danger at last. The lovei 
seeks in marriage his private felicity and perfec- 
tion, with no prospective end; and nature hides 
in his happiness her own end, namely, progeny, or 
the perpetuity of the race. 

But the craft with which the w^orld is made 
runs also into the mind and character of men. 
No man is quite sane ; each has a vein of folly 
in his composition, a slight determination of blood 
to the head, to make sure of holding him hard 
to some one point which nature had taken to 
heart. Great causes are never tried on their 
merits ; but the cause is reduced to particulars to 
suit the size of the partisans, and the contention 
is ever hottest on minor matters. Not less re- 
markable is the overfaith of each man in the. 
importance of what he has to do or say. The 
poet, the prophet, has a higher value for what he 
utters than any hearer, and therefore it gets 
spoken. The strong, self-complacent Luther de- 
clares with an emphasis, not to be mistaken, that 
" God himself cannot do without wise men."' 
Jacob Behmen and George Fox betray their ego- 
tism in the pertinacity of their controversial 
tracts, and James Naylor once suffered himself to 
be worshipped as the Christ. Each prophet 
comes presently to identify himself with his 
thought, and to esteem his hat and shoes sacred. 
However this may discredit such persons with the 
judicious, it helps them with the people, as it 
gives heat, pungency, and publicity to their 
words. A similar experience is not infrequent in 



NATURE, 163 

private life. Each young and ardent person 
writes a dairy, in which, when the hours of 
prayer and penitence arrive, he inscribes his 
soul The pages thus written are, to him, burn- 
ing and fragrant : he reads them on his knees by 
midnight and by the morning star ; he wets them 
witli his tears: they are sacred; too good fur the 
world, and hardly yet to be shown to the dearest 
friend. This is the man-child that is born tu the 
soul, and her life still circulates in the babe. The 
umbilical cord has not yet been cut. After some 
time has elapsed, he begins to wish to admit his 
friend to this hallowed experience, and v/ith 
hesitation, yet with firmness, exposes the pages to 
his eye. Will they not burn his eyes ? The 
friend coldly turns them over, and passes from 
the writing to conversation, with easy transition, 
which strikes the other party with astonishment 
and vexation. He cannot suspect the writing 
itself. Days and nights of fervid life, of com- 
munion with angels of darkness and of light, 
have engraved their shadowy characters on that 
tear-stained book. He suspects the intelligence 
or the heart of his friend. Is there then no 
friend? He cannot yet credit that one may hava 
impressive experience, and yet may not know how 
to put his private fact into literature : and per- 
haps the discovery that wisdom has other tongues 
and ministers than we, that though we should 
hold our peace, the truth would not the less be 
spoken, might check injuriously the flames of our 
zeal. A man can only speak, so long as he does 



1 64 ESSAY VI. 

not feel his speech to be partial and inadequate. 
It is partial, but he does not see it to be so, whilst 
he utters it. As soon as he is released from 
the instinctive and particular, and sees its partial- 
ity, he shuts his mouth in disgust. For, no man 
^can write anything, who does not think that what 
he writes is for the time the history of the world ; 
or do anything well, wlio does not esteem his 
work to be of importance. My work may be of 
none, but I must not think it of none, or I shall 
not do it with impunity. 

In like manner, there is throughout nature 
something mocking, something that leads us on 
and on, but arrives nowhere, keeps no faith with 
us. All promise outruns the performance. We 
live in a system of approximations. Every end 
is prospective of some other end, which is also 
temporary ; a round and final success nowhere. 
We are encamped in nature, not domesticated. 
Hunger and thirst lead us on to eat and drink ^ 
but bread and wine, mix and cook them how^ you 
will, leave us hungry and thirsty, after the 
stomach is full. It is the same with all our arts 
and performances. Our music, our poetrj^, our 
language itself are not satisfactions, but supges- 
tions. The hunger for wealth, which reduces the 
planet to a garden, fools the eager pursuer. 
What is the end sought? Plainly to secure the 
ends of good sense and beauty^ from the intrusion 
of deformity or vulgarity of any kind. But what 
an operose method I What a train of means to 
secure a little conversation ! This palace of brick 



NA TURE. 165 

and stone, these servants, this kitchen, these 
stables, horses and equipage, this bank-stock, 
and file of mortgages ; trade to all the world, 
country-house and cottage by the water-side, all 
for a little conversation, high, clear, and spiritual ! 
Could it not be had as well by beggars on the 
highway? No, all these things came from succes- 
sive efforts of these beggars to remove friction 
from the wheels of life, and give opportunity. 
Conversation, character were the avowed ends ; 
wealth was good as it appeased the animal 
cravings, cured the smoky chimney, silenced the 
creaking door, brought friends together in a warm 
and quiet room, and kept the children and the 
dinner-table in a different apartment. Thought, 
virtue, beauty were the ends ; but it was known 
that men of thought and virtue sometimes had 
the headache, or wet feet, or could lose good time 
whilst the room was getting warm in winter days. 
Unluckily, in the exertions necessary to remove 
these inconveniences, the main attention has been 
diverted to this object ; the old aims have been 
lost sight of, and to remove friction has come to 
be the end. That is the ridicule of rich men, and 
Boston, London, Vienna, and now the govern- 
ments generally of the world, are cities and 
governments of the rich, and the masses are not 
men, but foor men, that is, men who would be 
rich ; this is the ridicule of the class, that thej 
arrive with pains and sweat and fury nowhere ; 
when all is done, it is for nothing. They are like one 
^ho has interrupted the conversation of a company 



1 66 ESSAY VI. 

to make his speech, and now has forgotten what he 
went to say. The appearance strikes the eye 
everywhere of an aimless society, of aimless nations. 
Were the ends of nature so great and cogent, as 
to exact this immense sacrifice of men ? 

Quite analogous to the deceits in life, there is, 
as might be expected, a similar effect on the eye 
from the face of external nature. There is in 
woods and waters a certain enticement and flat- 
tery, together with a failure to yield a present 
satisfaction. This disappointment is felt in every 
landscape. I have seen the softness and beauty 
of the summer-clouds floating feathery overhead, 
enjoying, as it seemed, their height and privilege 
of motion, whilst yet they appeared not so much 
the drapery of this place and hour, as forelooking 
to some pavilions and gardens of festivity beyond. 
It is an odd jealousy: but the poet finds himself 
not near enough to his object. The pine-tree, the 
river, the bank of flowers before him, does not 
seem to be nature. Nature is still elsewhere. 
This or this is but outskirt and far-off reflection 
and echo of the triumph that has passed by, and 
is now at its glancing splendor and heyday, per- 
chance in the neighboring fields, or, if you stand 
in the field, then in the adjacent woods. The 
present object shall give you this sense of stillness 
that follows a pageant which has just gone by. 
What splendid distance, what recesses of ineffable 
pomp and loveliness in the sunset ! But who can 
go where they are, or lay his hand or plant his 
foot thereon? Off they fall from the round w.^rld 



NATURE. 167 

forever and ever. It is the same among the men 
and women, as among the silent trees ; always a 
referred existence, an absence, never a presence 
and satisfaction. Is it, that beauty can never be 
grasped ? in persons and in landscape is equally 
inaccessible ? The accepted and betrothed lover 
has lost the wildest charm of his maiden in her 
acceptance of him. She was heaven whilst he 
pursued her as a star : she cannot be heaven, if 
she stoops to such a one as he. 

What shall we say of this omnipresent appear- 
ance of that first projectile impulse, of this flat- 
tery and baulking of so many well-meaning 
creatures? Must we not suppose somewhere in 
the universe a slight treachery and derision ? Are 
we not engaged to a serious resentment of this 
use that is made of us? Are we tickled trout, 
and fools of nature? One look at the face of 
heaven and earth lays all petulance at rest, and 
soothes us to wiser convictions. To the intelli- 
geilt, nature converts itself into a vast promise, 
and will not be rashly explained. Her secret is 
untold. Many and many an CEdipus arrives: he 
has the v/hole mystery teeming in his brain. 
Alas ! the same sorcery has spoiled his skill ; no 
syllable can he shape on his lips. Her mighty 
orbit vaults like the fresh rainbow into the deep, 
but no archangel's wing was yet strong enough to 
follow it, and report of the return of the curve. 
But it also appears that our actions are seconded 
and disposed to greater conclusions than we de- 
signed. We are escorted on every hand through 



1 68 ESSAY VI. 

life by spiritual agents, and a beneficent purpose 
lies in wait for us. We cannot bandy words with 
nature, or deal with her as we deal with persons. 
If we measure our individual forces against hers, 
we may easily feel as if we were the sport of an 
:^nsuperable destiny. But if, instead of identify- 
ing ourselves with the work, we feel that the soul 
of the workman streams through us, we shall find 
the peace of the morning dwelling first in our 
hearts, and the fathomless powers of gravity and 
chemistry and, over them, of life, pre-existing 
witliin us in their highest form. 

The uneasiness which the thought of our help- 
lessness in the chain of causes occasions us, results 
from looking too much at one condition of nature, 
namely. Motion. But the drag is never taken 
from the wheel. Wherever the impulse exceeds, 
the Rest or Identity insinuates its compensation. 
All over the wide fields of earth grows the pru- 
nella or self-heal. After every foolish day we 
sleep off the fumes and furies of its hours ; and 
though we are always engaged with particulars, 
and often enslaved to them, we bring with us to 
every experiment the innate universal laws. 
These, while they exist in the mind as ideas, stand 
around us in nature forever embodied, a present 
sanity to expose and cure the insanity of men. 
Our servitude to particulars betrays into a hun- 
dred foolish expectations. We anticipate a new 
era from the invention of a locomotive, or a bal- 
loon ; the new engine brings with it the old 
checks. They say that by electro-magnetism, 



NATURE. 169 

your salad shall be grown from the seed, whilst 
your fowl is roasting for dinner : it is a symbol of 
our modern aims and endeavors, — of our conden- 
sation and acceleration of objects : but nothing is 
gained: nature cannot be cheated: man's life is 
but seventy salads long, grow they swift or grow 
they slow. In these checks and impossibilities^ 
however, we find our advantage, not less than in 
the impulses. Let the victory fall where it will, 
we are on that side. And the knowledge that we 
traverse the whole scale of being, from the centre 
to the poles of nature, and have some stake in 
every possibility, lends that sublime lustre to 
death, which philosophy and religion have too 
outwardly and literally striven to express in the 
popular doctrine of the immortality of the soul. 
The reality is more excellent than the report. 
Here is no ruin, no discontinuity, no spent balL 
The divine circulations never rest nor linger. 
Nature is the incarnation of a thought, and turns 
to a thought again, as ice becomes water and gas. 
The world is mind precipitated, and the vohitile- 
essence is forever escaping again into the state of 
free thought. Hence the virtue and pungency of 
the influence on the mind, of natural objects^ 
whether inorganic or organized. Man imprisoned,, 
man crystallized, man vegetative, speaks to man. 
impersonated. That power which does not re* 
spect quantity, which makes the whole and the 
particle its equal channel, delegates its smile to 
the morning, and distils its essence into every 
drop of rain. Every moment instructs, and every 



I70 ESSAV VI. 

object : for wisdom is infused into every form. 
► It has been poured into us as blood; it convulsed 
us as pain ; it slid into us as pleasure ; it envel- 
oped us in dull, melancholy days, or in days of 
cheerful labor ; we did not guess its essence, until 
after a long timco 



POLITICS. 



Gold and iron are good 

To buy iron and gold ; 
All earth's fleece and food 

For their like are sold. 
Boded Merlin wise, 

Proved Napoleon great,— 
Nor kind nor coinage buys 

Aught above its rate. 
Fear, Craft, and Avarice 

Cannot rear a State. 
Out of dust to build 

What is more than dust, — 
Walls iVmphion piled 

Phoebus stablish must. 
When the Muses nine 

With the Virtues meet. 
Find to their design 

An Atlantic seat, 
By green orchard boughs 

Fended from the heat. 
Where the statesman ploughs 

Furrow for the wheat ; 
When the Church is social worth, 
When the state-house is the heartlL, 
Then the perfect State is come, 
The Republican at home. 



POLITICS. 



In dealing with the State, we ought to remem- 
ber that its institutions are not aboriginal, though 
they existed before we were born : that they are 
nob superior to the citizen : that every one of them 
was once the act of a single man : ever}^ law and 
usage was a man's expedient to meet a particular 
case : that they all are imitable, all alterable ; we 
may make as good ; Ave may make better. Society 
is an illusion to the young citizen. It lies before 
him in rigid repose, with certain names, men, and 
institutions, rooted like oak-trees to the centre, 
round which all arrange themselves the best they 
can. But the old statesman knows that society is 
"fluid; there are no such roots and centres; but 
any particle may suddenly become the centre of 
the movement, and compel the system to gyrate 
round it, as every man of strong will, like Pisis- 
tratus, or Cromwell, does for a time, and every 
man of truth, like Plato, or Paul, does forever. 
But politics rest on necessary foundations, and 
cannot be treated with levity. Republics abound 
in young civilians, who believe that the laws make 

(173) 



174 ESSAY VI I. 

the city, that grave modifications of the policy and 
modes of living, and employments of the popula- 
tion, that commerce, education, and religion, may 
be voted in or out ; and that any measure, though 
it were absurd, may be imposed on a people, if 
only you can get sufficient voices to make it a law. 
But the wise know that foolish legislation is a 
rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting ; that 
the State must follow, and not lead the character 
and progress of the citizen ; the strongest usurper 
is quickly got rid of; and they only who build on 
Ideas, build for eternity ; and that the form of 
government which prevails is the expression of 
what cultivation exists in the population which 
permits it. The law is only a memorandum. We 
are superstitious, and esteem the statute somewhat: 
so much life as it has in the character of living 
men, is its force. The statute stands there to say, 
yesterday we agreed so and so, but how feel ye 
this article to-day^ Our statute is a currency, 
which we stamp w-ith our own portrait : it soon 
becomes unrecognizable, and in process of time 
will return to the mint. Nature is not democratic, 
nor limited-monarchical, but despotic, and will 
not be fooled or abated of any jot of her au-. 
thority, by the per test of her sons : and as fast as 
the public mind is opened to more intelligence, 
the code is seen to be brute and stammering. It 
speaks not articulately, and must be made to. 
Meantime the education of the general mind never 
stops. The reveries of the true and simple are 
prophetic. What the tender poetic youth dreams, 



POLITICS. 175 

and prays, and paints to-day, but shuns the ridi- 
cule of saying aloud, shall presently be the reso- 
lutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as 
grievance and bill of rights through conflict 
and war, and then shall be triumphant law and 
establishment for a hundred years, until it gives j 
place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures. The 
history of the State sketches in coarse outline the 
progress of thought, and follows at a distance the 
delicacy of culture and of aspiration. 

The theory of politics, which has possessed the 
mind of men, and which they have expressed the 
best they could in their laws and in their revolu- 
tions, considers persons and property as the two 
objects for whose protection government exists. 
Of persons, all have equal rights, in virtue of 
being identical in nature. This interest, of course, 
with its whole power demands a democracy. Whilst 
the rights of all as persons are equal, in virtue of 
their access to reason, their rights in property are 
very unequal. One man owns his clothes, and 
another owns a county. This accident, depend- 
ing, primarily, on the skill and virtue of the 
parties, of which there is every degree, and, sec- 
ondarily, on patrimony, falls unequally, and its 
rights, of course, are unequal. Personal rights, 
universally the same, demand a government framed 
on the ratio of the census: property demands a 
government framed on the ratio of owners and of 
owning. Laban, who has flocks and herds, wishes 
them looked after by an officer on the frontiers, 
lest the Midianites shall drive them off, and pays 



i'^e ESSAY VII. 

a tax to that end. Jacob has no flocks or herds, 
and no fear of the Midianites, and pays no tax to 
the officer. It seemed fit that Laban and Jacob 
should have equal rights to elect the officer, 
who is to defend their persons, but that Laban, and 
not Jacob, should elect the officer who is to guard 
the sheep and cattle. And, if question arise 
whether additional officers or watch-towers should 
be provided, must not Laban and Isaac, and those 
who must sell part of their herds to buy protection 
for the rest, judge better of this, and with more 
right, than Jacob, who, because he is a youth and 
a traveler, eats their bread and not his own. 

In the earliest society the proprietors made 
their own wealth, and so long as it comes to the 
owners in the direct way, no other opinion would 
arise in any equitable community, than that prop- 
erty should make the law for property, and per- 
sons the law for persons. 

But property passes through donation or inher- 
itance to those who do not create it. Gift, in one 
case, makes it as really the new owner's, as labor 
made it the first owner's : in the other case, of 
patrimony, the law makes an ownership, which 
will be valid in each man's view according to the 
estimate which he sets on the public tranquillity. 

It was not, however, found easy to embody the 
readily admitted principle, that property should 
make law for property, and persons for persons : 
since persons and property mixed themselves in 
every transaction. At last it seemed settled, that 
the rightful distinction was, that the proprietors 



POLITICS. 177 

should have more elective franchise than non-pro- 
prietors, on the Spartan principle of '' calling that 
which is just, equal ; not that which is equal, just." 

That principle no longer looks so self-evident 
as it appeared in former times, partly, because 
doubts have arisen whether too much weight had 
not been allowed in the laws, to property, and 
such a structure given to our usages, as allowed 
the rich to encroach on the poor, and to keep 
them poor; but mainly, because there is an in- 
stinctive sense, however obscure and yet inarticu- 
late, that the whole constitution of property, on 
its present tenures, is injurious, and its influence 
<p>\\ persons deteriorating and degrading; that 
'■ruly, the only interest for the consideration of 
The State is persons : that property will always 
follow persons ; that the highest end of govern- 
ment is the culture of men : and if men can be 
educated, the institutions will share their improve- 
ment, and the moral sentiment will write the law 
of the land. 

If it be not easy to settle the equity of this ques- 
tion, the peril is less when we take note of our 
natural defences. We are kept by better guards 
than the vigilance of such magistrates as we com- 
monly elect. Society always consists, in greatest 
part, of young and foolish persons. The old, who 
have seen through the hypocrisy of courts and 
statesmen, die, and leave no wisdom to their sons. 
They believe their own newspaper, as their fathers 
did at their age. With such an ignorant and de- 
ceivable majority, States would soon run to ruin, 
33 



178 ESSAV VII. 

but that there are limitations, beyond which the 
folly and ambition of governors cannot go. 
Things have their laws, as well as men ; and 
things refuse to be trifled with. Property will 
be protected. Corn will not grow, unless it is 
planted and manured ; but the farmer will not 
plant or hoe it, unless the chances are a hundred 
to one that he will cut and harvest it. Under 
any forms, persons and property must and will 
have their just sway. They exert their power, as 
steadily as matter its attraction. Cover up a 
pound of earth never so cunningl3% divide and 
subdivide it ; melt it to liquid, convert it to gas ; 
it will always weigh a pound : it will always 
attract and resist other matter, by the full virtue 
of one pound weight ; — and the attributes of a 
person, his wit and his moral energy, will exercise, 
under any law or extinguishing tyranny, their 
proper foice, — if not overtly, then covertly ; if not 
for the law, then against it ; with right, or by might. 
The boundaries of personal influence it is im- 
possible to fix, as persons are organs of moral or 
supernatural force. Under the dominion of an 
idea, which possesses the minds of multitudes, as 
civil freedom, or the religious sentiment, the pow= 
ers of persons are no longer subjects of calcula 
tion. A nation of men unanimously bent on 
freedom, or conquest, can easily confound the 
arithmetic of statists, and achieve extravagant 
actions, out of all proportion to their means; as, 
the Greeks, the Saracens, the Swiss, the Ameri- 
cans, and the French have done. 



POLITICS. 179 

In like manner, to every particle of property 
belongs its own attraction. A cent is the repre- 
sentative of a certain quantity of corn or other 
commodity. Its value is in the necessities of the 
animal man. It is so much warmth, so much 
bread, so much water, so much land. The law 
may do what it will with the owner of property, 
its just power will still attach to the cent. The 
law may in a mad freak say that all ^all have 
power except the owners of property : they shall 
have no vote. Nevertheless, by a higher law, the 
property will, year after year, write every statute 
that respects property. The non -proprietor will 
be the scribe of the proprietor. What the owners 
wish to do, the whole power of property will do, 
either through the law, or else in defiance of it. 
Of course, I speak of all the property, not merely 
of the great estates. When the rich are out- 
voted, as frequently happens, it is the joint treas- 
ury of the poor which exceeds their accumulations. 
Every man owns something, if it is only a cow, or 
a wheelbarrow, or his arms, and so has that prop- 
erty to dispose of. 

The same necessity which secures the rights of 
person and property against the malignity or folly 
of the magistrate determines the form and meth- 
ods of governing, which are proper to each nation, 
and to its habit of thought, and nowise transfera- 
ble to other states of society. In this country, 
we are very vain of our political institutions, 
which are singular in this, that they sprung, 
within the memory of living men, from the char- 



l8o ESSAV VIL 

acter and condition of the people, which they still 
express with sufficient fidelity, — and we ostenta- 
tiously prefer them to any other in history. They 
are not better, but only fitter for us. We may be 
wise in asserting the advantage in modern times 
of the democratic form, but to other states of so- 
ciety, in which religion consecrated the monarch- 
ical, that and not this was expedient. Democracy 
is better for us, because the religious sentiment 
of the present time accords better with it. Born 
democrats, we are nowise qualified to judge of 
monarchy, which, to our fathers living in the 
monarchical idea, was also relatively right. But 
our institutions, though in coincidence with the 
spirit of the age, have not any exemption from 
the practical defects which have discredited other 
forms. Every actual State is corrupt. Good 
men must not obey the laws too well. What 
satire on government can equal the severity of 
censure conveyed in the word 'politic^ which now 
for ages has signified cunning^ intimating that the 
State is a trick ? 

The same benign necessity and the same prac- 
tical abuse appear in the parties into which each 
State divides itself, of opponents and defenders 
of the administration of the government. Parties 
are also founded on instincts, and have better 
guides to their own humble aims than the sagacity 
of their leaders. They have nothing perverse in 
their origin, but rudely mark some real and last- 
ing relation. We might as wisely reprove the 
east wind, or the frost, as a political party, whose 



POLITICS. l8l 

members, for the most part, could give no account 
of their position, but stand for the defence of 
those interests in which they find themselves. 
Our quarrel with them begins, when they quit 
this deep natural ground at the bidding of some 
leader, and, obeying personal considerations, 
throw themselves into the maintenance and de- 
fence of points, nowise belonging to their system. 
A party is perpetually corrupted by personality. 
Whilst we absolve the association from dishonesty 
we cannot extend the same charity to their lead- 
ers. They reap the rewards of the docility and 
zeal of the masses which they direct. Ordinarily, 
our parties are parties of circumstance, and not 
of principle ; as, the planting interest in conflict 
with the commercial ; the party of capitalists, and 
tliat of operatives; parties which are identical in 
their moral character, and which can easily change 
ground with each other, in the support of many 
of their measures. Parties of principle, as relig- 
ious sects, or the party of free trade, of universal 
suffrage, of abolition of slavery, of abolition of 
capital punishment, degenerate into personalities, 
or would inspire enthusiasm. The vice of our 
.leading parties in this country (which may be 
cited as a fair specimen of these societies of opin- 
ion) is, that they do not plant themselves on the 
deep and necessary grounds to which they are 
respectively entitled, but lash themselves to fury 
in the carrying of some local and momentary 
measure, nowise useful to the commonwealth. Of 
the two great parties, which, at this hour, almost 



1 82 ESSAY VII. 

share the nation between them, I should say that 
one has the best cause, and the other contains the 
best men. The philosopher, the poet, or the re- 
ligious man will, of course, wish to cast his vote 
with the democrat, for free-trade, for wide suf- 
frage, for the abolition of legal cruelties in the 
penal code, and for facilitating in every manner 
the access of the young and the poor to the 
sources of wealth and power. But he can rarely 
accept the persons whom the so-called popular 
party propose to him as representatives of these 
liberalities. They have not at heart the ends 
which give to the name of democracy what hope 
and virtue are in it. The spirit of our American 
radicalism is destructive and aimless : it is not 
loving ; it has no ulterior and divine ends ; but is 
destructive only out of hatred and selfishness. 
On the other side, the conservative party, com- 
posed of the most moderate, able, and cultivated 
part of the population, is timid, and merely de- 
fensive of property. It vindicates no right, it 
aspires to no real good, it brands no crime, it pro- 
poses no generous policy, it does not build, nor 
write, nor cherish the arts, nor foster religion, nor 
establish schools, nor encourage science, nor 
emancipate the slave, nor befriend the poor, or 
the Indian, or the immigrant. From neither 
party, when in power, has the world any benefit 
to expect in science, art, or humanity, at all com- 
mensurate with the resources of the nation. 

I do not for these defects despair of our repub- 
lic. We are not at the mercy of any waves of 



POLITICS, 183 

chance. In the strife of ferocious parties, human 
nature always finds itself cherished, as the chil- 
dren of the convicts at Botany Bay are found to 
have as healthy a moral sentiment as other chil- 
dren. Citizens of feudal states are alarmed at 
our democratic institutions lapsing into anarchy; 
and the older and more cautious among ourselves 
are learning from Europeans to look with some 
terror at our turbulent freedom. It is said that 
in our license of construing the Constitution, and 
in the despotism of public opinion, we have no 
anchor ; and one foreign observer thinks he has 
found the safe -guard in the sanctity of Marriage 
among us ; and another thinks he has found it in 
our Calvinism. Fisher Ames expressed the popu- 
lar security more wisely, when he compared a 
monarchy and a republic, saying, '' that a mon- 
archy is a merchantman, which sails well, but will 
sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom ; 
whilst a republic is a raft, which would never 
sink, but then your feet are alwa3's in water." 
No forms can have any dangerous importance, 
whilst we are befriended by the laws of things, 
It makes no difference how many tons weight of 
atmosphere presses on our heads, so long as the 
same pressure resists it within the lungs. Aug- 
ment the mass a thousand fold, it cannot begin to 
crush us, as long as reaction is equal to action. 
The fact of two poles, of two forces, centripetal 
and centrifugal, is universal, and each force by its 
own activity develops the other. Wild liberty 
develops iron conscience. Want of liberty, by 



1 84 ESSAY VII. 

strengthening law and decorum, stupefies con* 
science. * Lynch-law ' prevails only where there 
is greater hardihood and self-subsistency in the 
leaders. A mob cannot be a permanency : every« 
body's interest requires that it should not existj 
and only justice satisfies all. 

We must trust infinitely to the beneficent ne- 
cessity which shines through all laws. Human • 
nature expresses itself in them as characteristic- 
ally as 'in statues, or songs, or railroads, and an ab- 
stract of the codes of nations would be a tran- 
script of the common conscience. Governments 
have their origin in the moral identity of men. 
Reason for one is seen to be reason for another, 
and for every other. There is a middle measure 
which satisfies all parties, be they never so many, 
or so resolute for their own. Every man finds a 
sanction for his simplest claims and deeds in de- 
cisions of his own mind, which he calls Truth and 
Holiness. In these decisions all the citizens find 
a perfect agreement, and only in these ; not in 
what is good to eat, good to wear, good use of 
time, or what amount of land, or of public aid, 
each is entitled to claim. This truth and justice 
men presently endeavor to make application of, to 
the measuring of land, the apportionment of serv- 
ice, the protection of life and property. Their 
first endeavors, no doubt, are very awkward. Yet 
absolute right is the first governor ; or, every 
government is an impure theocracy. The idea, 
after which each community is aiming to make 
and mend its law, is, the will of the wise man. 



POLITICS, 185 

The wise man it cannot find in nature, and it 
makes awkward but earnest efforts to secure liis 
government by contrivance ; as, by causing the 
entire people to give their voices on every meas- 
ure ; or, by a double choice to get the representa- 
tion of the whole ; or, by a selection of the best 
citizens ; or, to secure the advantages of efficiency 
and internal peace, by confiding the government 
to one who may himself select his agents. All 
forms of government symbolize an immortal gov- 
ernment, common to all dynasties and independ- 
ent of numbers, perfect where two men exist, per- 
fect where there is only one man. 

Every man's nature is a sufficient advertise- 
ment to him of the character of his fellows. 
My right and my wrong, is their right and their 
wrong. Whilst I do what is fit for me, and ab- 
stain from what is unfit, my neighbor and I shall 
often agree in our means, and work together for a 
time to one end. But whenever I find my do- 
minion over myself not sufficient for me, and un- 
dertake the direction of him also, I overstep the 
truth, and come into false relations to him. I 
may have so much more skill or strength than he, 
that he cannot express adequately his sense of 
wrong, but it is a lie, and hurts like a lie both 
him and me. Love and nature cannot maintain 
the assumption : it must be executed by a practi- 
cal lie, namely, by force. This undertaking for 
another is the blunder which stands in colossal 
ugliness in the governments of the world. It is 
the same thing in numbers, as in a pair, only noi 



1 86 ESSAY VIL 

quite so intelligible. I can see well enough a 
great difference between my setting myself down 
to a self-control, and m}^ going to make somebody 
else act after my views : but when a quarter of 
the human race assume to tell me what I must 
io, I may be too much disturbed by the circum- 
stances to see so clearly the absurdity of their 
command. Therefore, all public ends look vague 
and quixotic beside private ones. For, any laws 
but those which men make for themselves, are 
laughable. If I put myself in the place of my 
child, and we stand in one thought, and see that 
things are thus or thus, that perception is law for 
him and me. We are both there, both act. But if, 
without carrying him into the thought, I look 
over into his plot, and, guessing how it is with 
him, ordain this or that, he will never obey me. 
This is the history of governments, — one man 
does something which is to bind another. A man 
who cannot be acquainted with me, taxes me; 
looking from afar at me, ordains that a part of my 
labor shall go to this or that whimsical end, not 
as I, but as he happens to fancy. Behold the con- 
sequence. Of all debts, men are least willing to 
pay the taxes. What a satire is this on govern- 
ment ! Everywhere they think they get their 
money's worth, except for these. 

Hence, the less governmentwe have, the better, 
— the fewer laws, and the less confided power. 
The antidote to this abuse of formal Government 
is the influence of private character, the growth 
£if the Individual ; the appearance of the princi- 



POLITICS. 187 

pal to supersede the proxy ; the appearance of the 
wise man, of whom the existing government is, it 
must be owned, a shabby imitation. That which 
all things tend to educe, which freedom, cultiva- 
tion, intercourse, revolutions, go to form and de- 
liver, is character ; that is the end of nature, to 
reach unto this coronation of her king. To edu- 
cate the wise man, the State exists ; and with the 
appearance of the wise man, the State expires. 
The appearance of character makes the State un- 
necessary. The wise man is the State. He needs 
no army, fort, or navy, — he loves men too well ; 
no bribe, or feast, or palace, to draw friends to 
him ; no vantage ground, no favorable circum- 
stance. He needs no librarj^ for he has not done 
thinking ; no church, for he is a prophet ; no 
statute book, for he has the lawgiver ; no money, 
for he is value ; no road, for he is at home where 
he is ; no experience, for the life of the creator 
shoots through him, and looks from his eyes. He 
has no personal friends, for he who has the spell 
to draw the praj^er and piety of all men unto him 
needs not husband and educate a few, to share . 
with him a select and poetic life. His relation to 
men is angelic ; his memory is myrrh to them ; 
his presence, fraxikincense and flowers. 

We think our civilization near its meridian, but 
we are yet only at the cock-crowing and the 
morning star. In our barbarous society the in- 
fluence of character is in its infancy. As a polit- 
ical power, as the rightful lord who is to tumble 
all rulers from their chairs, its presence is hardly 



1 88 ESSAY VII. 

yet suspected. Malthus and Ricardo quite omit 
it ; the Annual Register is silent ; in the Conver- 
sations' Lexicon it is not set down ; the Presi- 
dent's Message, the Queen's Speech, have not 
mentioned it ; and yet it is never nothing. Every 
thought which genius and piety throw into the 
world alters the world. The gladiators in the 
lists of power feel, through all their frocks of 
force and simulation, the presence of worth. I 
think the very strife of trade and ambition are 
confession of this divinity ; and successes in those 
fields are the poor amends, the fig-leaf with which 
the shamed soul attempts to hide its nakedness. 
I find the like unwilling homage in all quarters. 
It is because we know how much is due from us, 
that we are impatient to show some petty talent 
as a substitute for worth. We are haunted by a 
conscience of this right to grandeur of character, 
and are false to it. But each of us has some 
talent, can do somewhat useful, or graceful, or 
formidable, or amusing, or lucrative. That we 
do, as an apology to others and to ourselves, for 
not reaching the mark of a good and equal life. 
But it does not satisfy us^ whilst we thrust it on 
the notice of our companions. It may throw dust 
in their eyes, but does not smooth our own brow, 
.or give us the tranquillity of the strong when we 
walk abroad. We do penance as we go. Our 
talent is a sort of expiation, and we are con- 
strained to reflect on our splendid moment, with a 
certain humiliation, as somewhat too fine, and not 
as one act of many acts, a fair expression of out 



POLITICS. 189 

permanent energy. Most persons of ability meet 
in society with a kind of tacit appeal. Each 
seems to say, ' I am not all here.' Senators and 
presidents have climbed so high with pain enough, 
not because they think the place specially agree- 
able, but as an apology for real worth, and to 
vindicate their manhood in our ej'es. This con* 
spicuous chair is their compensation to themselves 
for being of a poor, cold, hard nature. They 
must do what they can. Like one class of forest 
animals, they have nothing but a prehensile tail: 
climb they must, or crawl. If a man found him- 
self so rich-natured that he could enter into strict 
relations with the best persons, and make life 
serene around him by the dignity and sweetness 
of his behavior, could he afford to circumvent the 
favor of the caucus and the press, and covet rela- 
tions so hollow and pompous as those of a politi- 
cian ? Surely nobody would be a charlatan, who 
could afford to be sincere. 

The tendencies of the times favor the idea of 
self-government, and leave the individual, for all 
code, to the rewards and penalties of his own con- 
stitution, which work with more energy than we 
believe, whilst we depend on artificial restraints. 
The movement in this direction has been very 
marked in modern history. Much has been blind 
and discreditable, but the nature of the revolution* 
is not affected by the vices of the revolters ; for 
this is a purely moral force. It was never adopted 
by any party in history, neither can be. It sepa- 
rates the individual from all party, and unites 



190 ESSAY VII. 

him, at the same time, to the race. It promises a 
recognition of higher rights than those of per- 
sonal freedom, or the security of property. A 
man has a right to be employed, to be trusted, to 
be loved, to be revered. The power of love, as 
the basis of a State, has never been tried. - We 
must not imagine that all things are lapsing into 
confusion, if every tender protestant be not com- 
pelled to bear his part in c-ertain social conven- 
tions: nor doubt that roads can be built, letters 
carried, and the fruit of labor secured, when the 
government of force is at an end. Are our 
methods now so excellent that all competition 
is hopeless? Could not a nation of friends even 
devise better ways? On the other hand, let not 
the most conservative and timid fear anything 
from a premature surrender of the bayonet, and 
the system of force. For, according to the order 
of nature, which is quite superior to our will, it 
stands thus ; there will always be a government 
of force, where men are selfish ; and when they 
are pure enough to abjure the code of force, they 
will be wise enough to see how these public ends 
of the post-office, of the highway, of commerce, 
and the exchange of 'property, of museums and 
libraries, of institutions of art and science, can be 
answered. 

We live in a very low state of the world, and 
pay unwilling tribute to governments founded on 
force. There is not, among the most religious and 
instructed men of the most religious and civil na- 
tions, a reliance on the moral sentiment, and a 



POLITICS. 191 

sufficient belief in the unity of things to persuade 
them that society can be maintained without arti- 
ficial restraints, as well as the solar system ; or 
that the private citizen might be reasonable, and a 
good neighbor, without the hint of a jail or a con- 
fiscation. What is strange, too, there never was iii 
any man sufficient faith in the power of rectitude, 
to inspire him with the broad design of renovat- 
ing the State on the principle of right and love. 
All those who have pretended this design have 
been partial reformers, and have admitted in some 
manner the supremacy of the bad State. I do not 
call to mind a single human being Avho has 
steadily denied the authority of the laws, on the 
simple ground of his own moral nature. Such 
designs, full of genius and full of fate as they are, 
are not entertained except avowedly as air-pictures. 
If the individual who exhibits them dare to think 
them practicable, he disgusts scholars and church- 
men ; and men of talent, and women of superior 
sentiments, cannot hide their contempt. Not the 
less does nature continue to fill the heart of youth 
with suggestions of this enthusiasm, and there are 
now men, — if indeed I can speak in the plural 
number, — more exactly, I will say, I have just 
been conversing with one man, to whom no 
weight of adverse experience will make it for a 
moment appear impossible, that thousands of 
human beings might exercise towards each other 
the grandest and simplest sentiments, as well as a 
knot of friends, or a pair of lovers. 



NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 



In countless upward-striving waves 

The moon-drawn tide-wave strives; 
In thousand far-transplanted grafts 

The parent fruit survives ; 
So, in the new-born millions, 

The perfect Adam lives. 
Not less are summer-mornings dear 

To each child they wake. 
And each with novel life his sphere 

J^ills for his proper sake. 



:-iK 



NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 



I CANNOT often enough say that a man is rnly 
a relative and representative nature. Each is a 
hint of the truth, but far enough from being that 
truth, which yet he quite newly and inevitably 
suggests to us. If I seek it in him, I shall not 
find it. Could any man conduct into me the pure 
stream of that which he pretends to be I Long 
afterwards, I find that quality elsewhere which he 
promised me. The genius of the Platonists is in- 
toxicating to the student, yet how few particulars 
of it can I detach from all their books I The man 
momentarily stands for the thought, but will not 
bear examination ; and a society of men will 
cursorily represent well enough a certain quality 
and culture, for example^ chivahy orbeauty of man- 
ners: but separate them, and there is no gentleman 
and no lady in the group. The least hint sets us 
on the pursuit of a character which no man 
realizes. We have such exorbitant eyes, that on 
seeing the smallest arc, we complete the curve, and 
when the curtain is lifted from the diagram which 
it seemed to veil, we are vexed to find that no 

(195) 



196 ESSAY VIII. 

more was drawn, than just that fragment of an 
arc which we first beheld. We are greatly too 
liberal in our construction of each other's faculty 
and promise. Exactly what the parties have al- 
ready done, they shall do again ; but that which 
we inferred from their nature and inception, they 
will not do. That is in nature, but not in them. 
That happens in the world, which we often wit- 
ness in a public debate. Each of the speakers 
expresses himself imperfectly: no one of them 
hears much that another says, such is the preoccu- 
pation of mind of each ; and the audience, who 
have only to hear and not to speak, judge very 
wisely and superiorly how wrongheaded and un- 
skilful is each of the debaters to his own affair. 
Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily 
find, but symmetrical men never. When I meet 
a pure, intellectual force, or a generosity of affec- 
tion, I believe, here then is man ; and am presently 
mortified b}^ the discovery that this individual is 
no more available to his own or to the genera? 
ends than his companions ; because the power 
which drew mj^ respect is not supported by the 
total symphony of his talents. All persons exist 
to society by some shining trait of beauty or 
utility, which they have. We borrow the propor- 
tions of the man from that one fine feature, and 
finish the portrait symmetrically ; which is false , 
for the rest of his body is small .or deformed. I 
observe a person who makes a good public ap- 
pearance, and conclude thence tlie perfection of 
his private character, on which this is based ; but 



NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 197 

he has no private character. He is a graceful 
'cloak or lay-figure for holidays. All our poets, 
heroes, and saints fail utterly in some one or in 
many parts to satisfy our idea, fail to draw our 
spontaneous interest, and so leave us without any 
hope of realization but in our own future. Our 
- exaggeration of all fine characters arises from the 
fact that we identify each in turn with the soul. 
But there are no such men as we fable ; no Jesus, 
nor Pericles, nor C&esar, nor Angelo, nor Wash- 
ington, such as we have made. We consecrate a 
great deal of nonsense, because it was allowed by 
great men. There is none without his foible. I 
verily believe if an angel should come to chaunt 
the chorus of the moral law, he would eat too 
much gingerbread, or take liberties with private 
letters, or do some precious atrocity. It is bad 
enough, that our geniuses cannot do anything use- 
ful, but it is worse that no man is fit for society 
who has fine traits. He is admired at a distance, 
but he cannot come near without appearing a crip- 
ple. The men of fine parts protect themselves by 
solitude, or by courtesy, or by satire, or by an acid 
worldly manner, each concealing, as he best can, 
his incapacity for useful association; but they want 
either love or self-reliance. 

Our native love of reality joins with this ex- 
perience to teach us a little reserve, and to 
dissuade a too sudden surrender to the brilliant 
qualities of persons. Young people admire talents 
or particular excellences ; as we grow older, we 
value total powers and effects, as, the impression. 



198 ESSAY VIII. 

the quality, the spirit of men and things. The 
genius is all. The man, — it is his system : we do 
not try a solitary word or act, but his habit. The 
acts which you praise, I praise not, since they are 
departures from his faith, and are mere compliances. 
The magnetism which arranges tribes and races in 
one polarity is alone to be respected ; the men are 
steel filings. Yet we unjustly select a particle, 
and say, ' O steel-filing number one ! what heart - 
drawings I feel to thee ! what prodigious -virtues 
are these of thine ! how constitutional to thee, and 
incommunicable.' Whilst we speak, the loadstone 
is withdrawn ; down falls our filing in a heap with 
the rest, and w^e continue our mummery to the 
wretched shaving. Let us go for universals ; for 
the magnetism, not for the needles. Human life 
and its persons are poor empirical pretensions. 
A personal influence is an ignis fatuus. If they 
say, it is great, it is great ; if they say, it is small, 
it is small ; you see it, and you see it not, by 
turns ; it borrows all its size from the momentary 
estimation of the speakers : the Will-of-the-wisp 
vanishes if you go too near, vanishes if you go 
too far, and only blazes at one angle. Who can 
tell if Washington be a great man, or no? Who 
can tell if Franklin be ? Yes, or any but the 
twelve, or six, or three great gods of fame ? And 
they, too, loom and fade before the eternal. 

We are amphibious creatures, weaponed for 
two elements, having two sets of faculties, the 
particular and the catholic. We adjust our in- 
strument for general observation, and sweep the 



NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 199 

heavens as easily as we pick out a single figure in 
the terrestrial landscape. We are practically 
skilful in detecting elements, for which we have 
no place in our theory, and no name. Thus we 
are very sensible of an atmospheric influence in 
men and in bodies of men, not accounted for in 
an arithmetical addition of all their measurable 
properties. There is a genius of a nation, which 
is not to be found in the numerical citizens, but 
which characterizes the society. England, strong, 
punctual, practical, well-spoken England, I should 
not find, if I should go to the island to seek it. 
In the parliament, in the play-house, at dinner- 
tables, I might see a great number of rich, igno- 
rant, book-read, conventional, proud men, — many 
old women, — and not anywhere the Englishman 
who made the good speeches, combined the ac- 
curate engines, and did the bold and nervous 
deeds. It is even worse in America, where, from 
the intellectual quickness of the race, the genius 
of the country is more splendid in its promise, and 
more slight in its performance. Webster cannot 
do the work of Webster. We conceive distinctly 
enough the French, the Spanish, the German ge- 
nius, and it is not the less real, that perhaps we 
should not meet in either of those nations a single 
individual who corresponded with the type. We 
infer the spirit of the nation in great measure 
from the language, which is a sort of monument, 
to which each forcible individual in a course of 
many hundred years has contributed a stone. And, 
universally, a good example of this social force is 



200 ESSAY VIII. 

the veracity of language, which cannot be de- 
bauched. In any controversy concerning morals, 
an appeal may be made with safety to the sen- 
timents, which the language of the people ex- 
presses. Proverbs, words, and grammar inflec- 
tions convey the public sense with more purity and 
precision than the wisest individual. 

In the famous dispute with the Nominalists, 
the Realists had a good deal of reason. General 
ideas are essences. They are our gods : they 
round and ennoble the most partial and sordid 
way of living. Oar proclivity to details cannot 
quite degrade our life, and divest it of poetry. 
The day-laborer is reckoned as standing at the 
foot of the social scale, yet he is saturated with 
the laws of the world. His measures are the 
hours ; morning and night, solstice and equinox, 
geometry, astronomy, and all the lovely accidents 
of nature play through his mind. Money, which 
represents the prose of life, and which is hardly 
spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its 
effects and laws, as beautiful as roses. Property 
keeps the accounts of the world, and is always 
moral. The property will be found where the la- 
bor, the wisdom, and the virtue have been in na- 
tions, in classes, and (the whole life-time consid- 
ered, with the compensations) in the individual 
also. How wise the world appears, when the laws 
and usages of nations are largely detailed, and 
the completeness of the municipal system is con- 
sidered ! Nothing is left out. If you go into the 
markets, and the custom-houses, the insurers' and 



NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 201 

notaries' offices, the offices of sealers of weights 
and measures, of inspection of provisions, — it will 
appear as if one man had made it all. Wherever 
you go, a wit like your own has been before you, 
and has realized its thought. The Eleusinian 
mysteries, the Egyptian architecture, the Indian 
astronomy, the Greek sculpture, show that there 
always were seeing and knowing men in the 
planet. The world is full of masonic ties, of guilds, 
of secret and public legions of honor ; that of 
scholars, for example; and that of gentlemen fra- 
ternizing with the upper class of every country 
and every culture. 

1 am very much struck in literature b}^ the ap- 
pearance that one person wrote all the books ; 
as if the editor of a journal planted his bod}^ of 
reporters in different parts of the field of action, 
and relieved some b}^ others from time to time ; 
but there is such equality and identity both of 
judgment and point of view in the narrative, that 
it is plainly the work of one all-seeing, all-hearing 
gentleman. I looked into Pope's Odyssey yester- 
day : it is as correct and elegant, after our canon 
of to-day, as if it were newly written. The mod- 
erness of all good books seems to give me an ex- 
istence as wide as man. What is well done, I 
feel as if I did ; what is ill-done, I reck not of. 
Shakespeare's passages of passion (for example, in 
Lear and Hamlet) are in the very dialect of the 
present year. I am faithful again to the whole 
over the members in my use of books. I find the 
most pleasure in reading a book in a manner least 



202 ESSAY VIIL 

flattering to the author. I read Proclus, and some- 
times Plato, as I might read a dictionary, for a 
mechanical help to the fancy and the imagination. 
I read for the lustres, as if one should use a fine 
picture in a chromatic experiment, for its rich 
colors. 'Tis not Proclus, but a piece of nature 
and fate that I explore. It is a greater joy to see 
the author's author, than himself. A higher pleas- 
ure of the same kind I found lately at a concert, 
where I went to hear Handel's Messiah. As the mas- 
ter overpowered the littleness and incapableness of 
the performers, and made them conductors of his 
electricity, so it was easy to observe what efforts 
nature was making through so many hoarse, 
wooden, and imperfect persons, to produce beauti- 
ful voices, fluid and soul -guided men and women* 
The genius of nature was paramount at the ora- 
torio. 

This preference of the genius to the parts is the 
secret of that deification of art which is found in 
all superior minds. Art, in the artist, is propor- 
tion, or, a habitual respect to the whole by an eye 
loving beauty in details. And the wonder and 
charm of it is the sanity in insanity which it denotes. 
Proportion is almost impossible to human beings. 
There is no one who does not exaggerate. In 
conversation, men are encumbered with personal- 
ity, and talk too much. In modern sculpture, 
picture, and poetry the beauty is miscellaneous; 
the artist works here and there, and at all points, 
adding and adding, instead of unfolding the unit 
of his thought. Beautiful details we must have, 



NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 203 

or no artist : but they must be means and never 
other. The eye must not lose sight for a moment 
of the purpose. Lively boys write to their ear 
and eye, and the cool reader finds nothing but 
sweet jingles in it. When they grow older, they 
respect the argument. 

We obey the same intellectual integrity, when 
we study in exceptions the law of the world. 
Anomalous facts, as the never quite obsolete 
rumors of magic and deinonology, and the new 
allegations of phrenologists and neurologists, are 
of ideal use. They are good indications. Homoeop- 
athy is insignificant as an art of healing, but of 
great value as criticism on the hygeia or medical 
practice of the time. So with Mesmerism, 
Swedenborgism, Fourierism, and the Millennial 
Church; they are poor pretensions enough, but 
good criticism on the science, philosophy, and 
preaching of the day. For these abnormal insights 
of the adepts ought to be normal, and things of 
course. 

All things show us that on every side we are 
very near to the best. It seems not worth while 
to execute with too much pains some one intellect- 
ual, or sesthetical, or civil feat, when presently 
the dream will scatter, and we shall burst into 
universal power. The reason of idleness and of 
crime is the deferring of our hopes. Whilst we 
are waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with 
sleep, with eating, and with crimes. 

Thus we settle it in our cool libraries, that all 



204 ESSAV VIII. 

the agents with which we deal are subalterns, 
which we can well afPord to let pass, and life will 
be simpler when we live at the centre, and flout 
the surfaces. I wish to speak with all respect of 
persons, but sometimes I must pinch myself to 
keep awake, and preserve the due decorum. 
They melt so fast into each other, that they are 
like grass and trees, and it needs an effort to treat 
them as individuals. Though the uninspired man 
certainly finds persons a conveoiency in house- 
hold matters, the divine man does not respect 
them : he sees them as a rack of clouds, or a fleet 
of ripples which the wind drives over the surface 
of the water. But this is flat rebellion. Nature 
will not be Buddhist: she resents generalizing, 
and insults the philosopher in every moment with 
a million of fresh particulars. It is all idle talk- 
ing: as much as a man is a whole, so is he also a 
part ; and it were partial not to see it. What you 
say in your pompous distribution only distributes 
you into your class and section. You have not 
got rid of parts by denying them, but are the 
more partial. You are one thing, but nature is 
one thincf and the other thing, in the same moment. 
She will not remain orbed in a thought, but 
rushes into persons; and when each person, in- 
flamed to a fury of personality, would conquer all 
things to his poor crotchet, she raises up against 
him another person, and by many persons 
incarnates again a sort of whole. She will have 
all. Nick Bottom cannot play all the parts, work 
it how he may : there will be somebody else, and 



NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 20$ 

the world will be round. Everything must have 
its flower or effort at the beautiful, coarser or 
finer according to its stuff. They relieve and 
recommend each other, and the sanity of society 
is a balance of a thousand insanities. She 
punishes abstractionists, and will only forgive an 
induction which is rare and casual. We like to 
come to a height of land and see the landscape, 
just as we value a general remark in conversation. 
But it is not the intention of nature that we 
should live by general views. We fetch fire and 
water, run about all day among the shops and 
markets, and get our clothes and shoes made and 
mended, and are the victims of these details, and 
once in a fortnight we arrive perhaps at a rational 
moment. If we were not thus infatuated, if we 
saw the real from hour to hour, we should not be 
here to write and to read, but should have been 
burned or frozen long ago. She would never get 
anything done, if she suffered admirable Crichtons, 
and universal geniuses. She loves better a wheel- 
wright who dreams all night of wheels, and a 
groom who is part of his horse : for she is full of 
work, and these are her hands. As the frugal 
farmer takes care that his cattle shall eat down 
the rowan, and swine shall eat the waste of his 
house, and poultr}^ shall pick the crumbs, so our 
economical mother despatches a new genius and 
habit of mind into every district and condition of 
existence, plants an eye wherever a new ray of 
light can fall, and gathering up into some man every 
property in the universe, establishes thousand- 



206 ESSAY VIII. 

fold occult mutual attractions among her off- 
spring, that all this wash and waste of power may 
be imparted and exchanged. 

Great dangers undoubtedly accrue from this in- 
carnation and distribution of the godhead, and 
hence nature has her maligners, as if she were 
Circe ; and Alphonso of Castille fancied he could 
have given useful advice. But she does not go 
unprovided ; she has hellebore at the bottom of 
the cup. Solitude would ripen a plentiful crop of 
despots. The recluse thinks of men as having his 
manner, or as not having his manner; and as 
having degrees of it, more and less. But when he 
comes into a public assembly, he sees that men 
have very different manners from his own, and in 
their way admirable. In his childhood and youth 
he has had many checks and censures, and thinks 
modestly enough of his own endowment. When 
afterwards he comes to unfold it in propitious cir- 
cumstance, it seems the only talent: he is 
delighted with his success, and accounts himself 
already the fellow of the great. But he goes into 
a mob, into a banking-house, into a mechanic's 
shop, into a mill, into a laboratory, into a ship, 
into a camp, and in each new place he is no better 
than an idiot: other talents take place, and rule 
the hour. The rotation which whirls every leaf 
and pebble to the meridian, reaches to every gift 
of man, and we all take turns at the top. 

For nature, who abhors mannerism, has set her 
heart on breaking up all styles and tricks, and it 
is so much easier to do what one has done before, 
than to do a new thing, that there is a perpetual 



NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 207 

tendency to a set mode. In every conversation, 
even the highest, there is a certain trick, which 
may be soon learned by an acute person, and then 
that particular style continued indefinitely. 
Each man, too, is a tyrant in tendency, because he 
would impose his idea on others ; and their trick 
is their natural defence. Jesus would absorb the 
race ; but Tom Paine or the coarsest blasphemer 
helps humanity by resisting this exuberance of 
power. Hence the immense benefit of party in 
politics, as it reveals faults of character in a 
chief, which the intellectual force of the persons, 
with ordinary opportunity, and not hurled into 
aphelion by hatred, could not have seen. Since 
we are all so stupid, what benefit that there 
should be two stupidities ! It is like that brute 
advantage so essential to astronomy, of having the 
diameter of the earth's orbit for a base of its. tri- 
angles. Democracy is morose, and runs to 
anarchy, but in the state, and in the schools, it is 
indispensable to resist the consolidation of all 
men into a few men. If John was perfect, why 
are you and I alive ? As long as any man exists, 
there is some need of him ; let him fight for his 
own. A new poet has appeared ; a new character 
approached us ; why should we refuse to eat 
bread, until we have found his regiment and sec- 
tion in our old army-files? Why not a new man? 
Here is a new enterprise of Brook Farm, of 
Skeneateles, of Northampton : why so impatient 
to baptize them Essenes, or Port-Royalists, or 
Shakers, or by any known and effete name? Let 



208 ESSAY VIIL 

it be a new way of living. Why have only two 
or three ways of life, and not thousands? Every 
man is wanted, and no man is wanted much. We 
came this time for condiments, not for corn. We 
want the great genius only for joy : for one star 
more in our constellation, for one tree more in our 
grove. But he thinks we wish to belong to him, 
as he wishes to occup}^ us. He greatly mistakes ■ 
us. I think I have done well, if I have acquired 
a new word from a good author ; and vixy business 
with him is to find my own, though it were only 
to melt him down into an epithet or an image for 
daily use. 

*' Into paint will I grind thee, my bride! " 

To embroil the confusion, and make it impossi- 
ble to arrive at any general statement, when we 
have insisted on the imperfection of individuals, 
our affections and our experience urge that 
every individual is entitled to honor, and a very 
generous treatment is sure to be repaid. A recluse 
sees only two or three persons, and allows them 
all their room ; they spread themselves at large. 
The man of state looks at many, and compares the 
few habitually with others, and these look less. 
Yet are they not entitled to this generosity of re- 
ception? and is not munificence the means of 
insight? For, though gamesters say that the cards 
beat all the players, though they were never so 
skilful, yet in the contest we are now considering, 
the players are also the game, and share the power 



NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 209 

of the cards. If you criticise a fine genius, the 
odds are that you are out of your reckoning, and, 
instead of the poet, are censuring your own cari- 
cature of him. For there is somewhat spheral and 
infinite in every man, especially in every genius, 
which, if you can come very near him, sports with 
all your limitations. For, rightly, every man is a 
channel through which heaven floweth, and, whilst 
I fancied I was criticising him, I was censuring or 
rather terminating my own soul. After taxing 
Goethe as a courtier, artificial, unbelieving, 
worldly, — I took up this book of Helena, and 
found him an Indian of the wilderness, a piece of 
pure nature like an apple or an oak, large as morn- 
ing or night, and virtuous as a briar-rose. 

But care is taken that the whole tune shall be 
played. If we were not kept among surfaces, 
everything would be large and universal : now 
the excluded attributes burst in on us with the 
more brightness, that they have been excluded. 
*' Your turn now, my turn next," is the rule of the 
game. The universalit}^ being hindered in its pri- 
mary form, comes in the secondary form of all 
sides : the points come in succession to the merid- 
ian, and by the speed of rotation, a new whole is 
formed. Nature keeps herself whole, and her 
representation complete in the experience of each 
mind. She suffers no seat to be vacant in her col- 
lege. It is the secret of the world that all things 
subsist, and do not die, but only retire a little 
from sight, and afterwards return again. What- 
ever does not concern us, is concealed from us. 
35 



210 ESSAY VIIL 

As soon as a person is no longer related to oui 
present well-being, he is concealed, or die%^ as we 
say. Really, all things and persons are related to 
us, but according to our nature, they act on us not 
at once, but in succession, and we are made aware 
©f their presence one at a time. All persons, all 
.things which we have known, are here presents 
and many more than we see ; the world is full. 
As the ancient said, the world is a 'plenum or solid; 
and if we saw all things that really surround us, 
we should be imprisoned and unable to move. 
For, though nothing is impassable to the soul, but 
all things are pervious to it, and like highways, 
yet this is only whilst the soul does not see them. 
As soon as the soul sees any object, it stops before 
that object. Therefore, the divine Providence, 
which keeps the universe open in every direction 
to the soul, conceals all the furniture and all the 
persons that do not concern a particular soul, from 
the senses of that individual. Through solidest 
eternal things, the man finds his road, as if they 
did not subsist, and does not once suspect their 
being. As soon as he needs a new object, sud- 
denly he beholds it, and no longer attempts to pass 
through it, but takes another way. When he has 
exhausted for the time the nourishment to be 
drawn from any one person or thing, that object 
is withdrawn from his observation, and though 
still in his immediate neighborhood, he does not 
suspect its presence. 

Nothing is dead : men feign themselves dead, 
and endure mock funerals and mournful obituaries, 



NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 211 

and there they stand looking out of the window, 
sound and well, in some new and strange disguise. 
Jesus is not dead : he is very well alive : nor John, 
nor Paul, nor Mahomet, nor Aristotle ; at times 
we believe we have seen them all, and could eas- 
ily tell the names under which they go. 

If we cannot make voluntary and conscious 
steps in the admirable science of universals, let us 
see the parts wisely, and infer the genius of na- 
ture from the best particulars with a becoming 
charity. What is best in each kind is an index of 
what should be the average of that thing. Love 
shows me the opulence of nature, by disclosing to 
me in my friend a hidden wealth, and I infer an 
equal depth of good in every other direction. It 
is commonly said by farmers, that a good pear or 
apple costs no more time or pains to rear, than a 
poor one ; so I would have no work of art, no 
speech, or action, or thought, or friend, but the 
best. 

The end and the means, the gamester and the 
game, — life is made up of the intermixture and re- 
action of these two amicable powers, whose mar- 
riage appears beforehand monstrous, as each 
denies and tends to abolish the other. We must 
reconcile the contradictions as we can, but their 
discord and their concord introduce wild absurdi- 
ties into our thinking and speech. No sentence 
will hold the whole truth, and the only way in 
which we can be just, is by giving ourselves the 
lie ; Speech is better than silence ; silence is better 
than speech ; — All things are in contact ; every 



212 ESSAY VIII. 

atom has a sphere of repulsion ; — Things are, and 
are not, at the same time ; — and the like. All the 
universe over, there is but one thing, this old 
Two-Face, creator-creature, mind -matter, right- 
wrong, of which any proposition may be affirmed 
or denied. Very fitl}^, therefore, I assert, that 
every man is a partialist, that nature secures him 
as an instrument by self-conceit, preventing the 
tendencies to religion and science ; and now further 
assert that, each man's genius being nearly and 
affectionately explored, he is justified in his indi- 
viduality, as his nature is found to be immense ; 
and now I add, that every man is a universalist 
also, and, as our earth, whilst it spins on its own 
axis, spins all the time around the sun through 
the celestial spaces, so the least of its rational 
children, the most dedicated to his private affair, 
works out, though as it were under a disguise, the 
universal problem. We fancy men are individu- 
als ; so are pumpkins ; but everj^ pumpkin in the 
field goes through every point of pumpkin his- 
tory. The rabid democrat, as soon as he is sena- 
tor and rich man, has ripened beyond possibility 
of sincere radicalism, and unless he can resist the 
sun, he must be conservative the remainder of his 
days. Lord Eldon said in his old age, " that, if 
he were to begin life again, he would be damned '; 
but he would begin as agitator." 

We hide this universality, if we can, but it ap- 
pears at all points. We are as ungrateful as chil- 
dren. There is nothing we cherish and strive to 
draw to us, but in some hour we turn and rend it- 



NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 213 

We keep a running fire of sarcasm at ignorance 
and the life of the senses; then goes by, per- 
chance, a fair girl, a piece of life, gay and happy, 
and making the commonest offices beautiful, by 
the energy and heart with which she does them, 
and seeing this, we admire and love her and them, 
and say, " Lo ! a genuine creature of the fair 
earth, not dissipated, or too early ripened by 
books, philosophy, religion, society, or care I " in- 
sinuating a treachery and contempt for all we had 
so long loved and wrought in ourselves and others. 
If we could have any security against mouds ! 
If the profoundest prophet could be holden to hi& 
words, and the hearer who is ready to sell all and 
join the crusade, could have any certificate that to 
morrow his prophet shall not unsay his testimony ! 
But the Truth sits veiled there on the Bench, and 
never interposes an adamantine syllable; and the 
most sincere and revolutionary doctrine, put as if 
the ark of God were carried forward some fur- 
longs, and planted there for the succor of the 
world, shall in a few weeks be coldly set aside by 
the same speaker, as morbid ; " I thought I was 
right, but I was not," — and the same immeasur- 
able credulity demanded for new audacities. If we 
were not of all opinions ! if we did not in any mo- 
ment shift the platform on which we stand, and 
look and speak from another I if there could be 
any regulation, any ' one-hour-rule,' that a man 
should never leave his point of view, without 
sound of trumpet. I am always insincere, as al- 
ways knowing there are other moods. 



214 ESSAV VIII. 

How sincere and confidential we can be, saying 
all that lies in the mind, and yet go away feeling 
that all is yet unsaid, from the incapacity of the 
parties to know each other, although they use the 
same words ! My companion assumes to know my 
mood and habit of thought, and we go on from 
explanation to explanation, until all is said which 
"Words can, and we leave matters just as they were 
at first, because of that vicious assumption. Is it 
that every man believes every other to be an in- 
curable partialist, and himself an universalist? I 
talked yesterday with a pair of philosophers : I 
endeavored to show my good men that I love 
everything by turns, and nothing long ; that I 
loved the centre, but doated on the superficies ; 
that I loved man, if men seemed to me mice and 
rats ; that I revered saints, but woke up glad that 
the old pagan world stood its ground, and died j 
hard ; that I was glad of men of every gift and 
nobility, but would not live in their arms. Could 
they but once understand that I loved to know 
that they existed, and heartily wished them God- 
speed, yet, out of my poverty of life and thought, 
had no word or welcome for them when they came 
to see me, and could well consent to their living 
in Oregon, for any claim I felt on them, it would 
be a great satisfaction. 



NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 



NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 



A LECTURE READ BEFORE THE SOCIETY IN AMORY 
HALL, ON SUNDAY, 3 MARCH, 18^4. 

Whoever has had opportunity of acquaintance 
with society in New England, during the last 
twenty-five years, with those middle and with 
those leading sections that may constitute any 
just representation of the character and aim of 
the community, will have been struck with the 
great activity of thought and experimenting. 
His attention must be commanded by the signs 
that the Church, or religious part}^ is falling from 
the church nominal, and is appearing in temper- 
ance and non-resistance societies, in movements of 
abolitionists and of socialists, and in very signifi- 
cant assemblies, called Sabbath and Bible Conven- 
tions, — composed of ultraists, of seekers, of all 
the soul of the soldiery of dissent, and meeting 
to call in question the authority of the Sabbath, 
of the priesthood, and of the church. In these 
movements, nothing was more remarkable than 
the discontent they begot in the movers. The 
spirit of protest and of detachment drove the 
members of these Conventions to bear testimony 

(217) 



2l8 LECTURE AT AMORY HALL. 

against the church, and immediately afterward, to 
declare their discontent with these ConYentions, 
their independence of their colleagues, and their 
impatience of the methods whereby they were 
working. They defied each other, like a congress 
of kings, each of whom had a realm to rule, and 
1 way of his own that made concert unprofitable. 
What a fertility of projects for the salvation of 
the world ! One apostle thought all men should 
go to farming ; and another, that no man should 
buy or sell ; that the use of money was the cardi- 
nal evil ; another, that the mischief was in our 
diet, that we eat and drink damnation. These 
made unleavened bread, and were foes to the 
death to fermentation. It was in vain urged by 
the housewife, that God made yeast, as well as 
dough, and loves fermentation just as dearly as he 
loves vegetation : that fermentation develops the 
saccharine element in the grain, and makes it 
more palatable and more digestible. No ; they 
wish the pure wheat, and will die but it shall not 
ferment. Stop, dear nature, these incessant ad- 
vances of thine ; let us scotch these ever-rolling 
wheels I Others attacked the system of agricul- 
ture, the use of animal manures in farming; and 
the tyranny of man over brute nature ; these 
abuses polluted his food. The ox must be taken 
from the plough, and the horse from the cart, the 
hundred acres of the farm must be spaded, and 
the man must walk wherever boats and locomo- 
tives will not carry him. Even the insect world 
was to be defended, — that had been too long 



NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 219 

neglected, and a society for the protection of 
ground-worms, slugs, and mosquitos was to be incor- 
porated without delay. With these appeared the 
adepts of homoeopathy, of hydropathy, of mesmer- 
ism, of phrenology, and their wonderful theories of 
the Christian miracles! Others assailed particular 
vocations, as that of the lawyer, that of the mer- 
chant, of the manufacturer, of the clergyman, of 
the scholar. Others attacked the institution of 
marriage, as the fountain of social evils. Others 
devoted themselves to the worrying of churches 
and meetings for public worship ; and the fertile 
forms of antinomianism among the elder puritans 
seemed to have their match in the plenty of the 
new harvest of reform. 

With this din of opinion and debate, there was 
a keener scrutiny of institutions and domestic life 
than any we had known, there was sincere jjro- 
testing against existing evils, and there were 
changes of employment dictated by conscience. 
No doubt, there was plentiful vaporing, and cases 
of backsliding might occur. But in each of these 
movements emerged a good result, a tendency to . 
the adoption of simpler methods, and an assertion 
of the sufficiency of the private man. Thus it 
was directly in the spirit and genius of the age, • 
what happened in one instance, when a church 
censured and threatened to excommunicate one of 
its members, on account of the somewhat hostile 
part to the church which his conscience led him 
to take in the anti-slavery business ; the threat- 
ened individual immediately excommunicated the 



220 LECTURE AT AMORY HALL. 

church in a public and formal process. This has 
been several times repeated : it was excellent 
when it was done the first time, but, of course, 
loses all value when it is copied. Every project 
in the history of reform, no matter how violent 
and surprising, is good, when it is the dictate of a 
man's genius and constitution, but very dull and 
suspicious when adopted from another. It is 
right and beautiful in any man to say, ' I will take 
this coat, or this book, or this measure of corn of 
yours,'^ — in whom we see the act to be original, 
and to flow from the whole spirit and faith of 
him ; for then that taking will have a giving as 
free and divine : but we are very easily disposed 
to resist the same generosity of speech, when we 
miss originality and truth to character in it. 

There was in all the practical activities of New 
England, for the last quarter of a century, a grad- 
ual withdrawal of tender consciences from the 
social organizations. There is observable through- 
out, the contest between mechanical and spiritual 
methods, but with a steady tendency of the 
thoughtful and virtuous to a deeper belief and 
reliance on spiritual facts. 

In politics, for example, it is easy to see the 
progress of dissent. The country is full of rebel- 
lion ; the country is full of kings. Hands off! 
let there be no control and no interference in the 
administration of the affairs of this kingdom of 
me. Hence the growth of the doctrine and of 
the party of Free Trade, and the willingness to 
try that experiment, in the face of what appear 



JVEJ^V ENGLAND REFORMERS, 221 

incontestable facts. I confess, tlie motto of the 
Globe newspaper is so attractive to me, that I can 
seldom find much appetite to read what is below 
it in its columns, '' The world is governed too 
much." So the country is frequently affording 
solitary examples of resistance to the government, 
solitary nullifiers, who throw themselves on their 
reserved rights ; nay, who have reserved all their 
rights ; who reply to the assessor, and to the clerk 
of court, that they do not know the State ; and 
embarrass the courts of law, by non-juring, and 
the commander-in-chief of the militia, by non- 
resistance. 

The same disposition to scrutiny and dissent 
appeared in civil, festive, neighborl3^ and domes- 
tic society. A restless, pryiiig, conscientious 
criticism broke out in unexpected quarters. Who 
gave me the money with which I bought my 
coat? Why should professional labor and that of 
the counting-house be paid so disproportionately 
to the labor of the porter, and wood-sawyer ? 
This whole business of Trade gives me to pause 
and think, as it constitutes false relations between 
men ; inasmuch as I am prone to count myself 
relieved of any responsibility to behave well and 
nobly to that person whom I pay with money, 
whereas if I had not that commodity, I should be 
put on my good behavior in all companies, and 
man would be a benefactor to man, as being him- 
self his only certificate that he had a right to those 
aids and services which each asked of the other. 
Am I not too protected a person ? is there not a 



222 LECTURE AT AMORY HALL. 

wide disparity between the lot of me and the lot 
of thee, my poor brother, my poor sister ? Am I 
not defrauded of my best culture in the loss of 
those gymnastics which manual labor and the 
emergencies of poverty constitute? I find noth- 
ing healthful or exalting in the smooth conven- 
tions of society ; I do not like the close air of 
saloons. I begin to suspect myself to be a pris- 
oner, though treated with all this courtesy and 
luxury. I pay a destructive tax in my conformity. 
The same insatiable criticism may be traced in 
the efforts for the reform of Education. The 
popular education has been taxed with a want of 
truth and nature. It was complained that an 
education to things was not given. We are 
students of words: we are shut up in schools, 
and colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or 
fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of 
wind, a memory of words, and do not know a 
thing. We cannot use our hands, or our legs, 
or our eyes, or our arms. We do not know an 
edible root in the woods, we cannot tell our 
course by the stars, nor the hour of the day by 
the sun. It is well if we can swim and skate. 
We are afraid of a horse, of a cow, of a dog, of 
a snake, of a spider. The Roman rule was, to 
teach a boy nothing that he could not learn 
standing. The old English rule was, 'All sum- 
mer in the field, and all winter in the study.' And 
it seems as if a man should learn to plant, or to 
fisi), or to hunt, that he might secure his subsist- 
ence at all events, and not be painful to his friends 



NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 223 

and fellow-men. The lessons of science should be 
experimental also. The sight of the planet through 
a telescope is worth all the course on astronomy : 
the shock of the electric spark in the elbow out- 
values all the theories ; the taste of the nitrous 
oxide, the firing of an artificial volcano, are bet- 
ter than volumes of chemistry. 

One of the traits of the new spirit is the inquisi- 
tion it fixed on our scholastic devotion to the dead 
languages. The ancient languages, with great 
beauty of structure, contain wonderful remains of 
genius, which draw, and always will draw, certain 
likeminded men, — Greek men, and Roman men, in 
all countries, to their study ; but by a wonderful 
drowsiness of usage, they had exacted the study of 
all men. Once (say two centuries ago), Latin and 
Greek had a strict relation to all the science and 
culture there was in Europe, and the Mathematics 
had a momentary importance at some era of 
activity in physical science. These things became 
stereotyped as education^ as the manner of men is. 
But the Good Spirit never cared for the colleges, 
and though all men and boys were now drilled in 
Latin, Greek, and Mathematics, it had quite left 
these shells high and dry on the beach, and was 
now creating and feeding other matters at other 
ends of the world. But in a hundred high schools 
and colleges this warfare against common sense 
still goes on. Four, or six, or ten years, the pupil 
is parsing Greek and Latin, and as soon as he 
leaves the University, as it is ludicrously called, he 
shuts those books for the last time. Some thou- 



224 LECTURE AT AMORY HALL. 

sands of young men are graduated at our colleges 
in this country every year, and the persons who, 
at forty years, still read Greek, can all be counted 
on your hand. I never met with ten. Four or 
five persons I have seen who read Plato. 

But is not this absurd, that the whole liberal 
talent of this country should be directed in its- 
best years on studies which lead to nothing?: 
What was the consequence ? Some intelligent 
person said or thought: 'Is that -Greek and. 
Latin some spell to conjure with, and not words 
of reason? If the physician, the lawyer, the 
divine, never use it to come at their ends, I need 
never learn it to come at mine. Conjuring is gone 
out of fashion, and I will omit this conjugating, 
and go straight to aifairs.' So they jumped the 
Greek and Latin, and read law, medicine, or ser- 
mons, without it. To the astonishment of all, the 
self-made men took even ground at once with the 
oldest of the regular graduates, and in a few 
months the most conservative circles of Boston and 
New York had quite forgotten who of their gowns- 
men was college-bred, and who was not. 

One tendenc}^ appears alike in the philosophical 
speculation, and in .the rudest democratical move- 
ments, through all the petulance and all the 
puerility, the wish, namely, to cast aside the super- 
fluous, and arrive at short methods, urged. as I 
suppose, by an intuition that the human spirit is 
equal to all emergencies, alone, and that man is 
more often injured than helped by the means he 
uses. 



NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 225 

I conceive this gradual casting off of material 
aids, and the indication of growing trust in the 
private, self-supplied powers of the individual, to 
be the affirmative principle of the recent phil- 
osophy : and that it is feeling its own profound 
truth, and is reaching forward at this very hour 
to the happiest conclusions. I readily concede 
that in this, as in every period of intellectual 
activity, there has been a noise of denial and protest ; 
much was to be resisted, much was to be got rid of 
by those who were reared in the old, before they 
could begin to affirm and to construct. Many a 
reformer perishes in his removal of rubbish, — and 
that makes the offensiveness of the class. They 
are partial ; they are not equal to the work they 
pretend. They lose their way ; in the assault on 
the kingdom of darkness, they expend all their 
energy on some accidental evil, and lose their 
sanity and power of benefit. It is of little mo- 
ment that one or two, or twenty errors of our 
social system be corrected, but of much that the 
man be in his senses. 

The criticism and attack on institutions which 
we have witnessed has made one thing plain, that 
society gains nothing whilst a man, not himself ren- 
ovated, attempts to renovate things around him : 
he has become tediously good in some particular, 
but negligent or narroAV in the rest ; and hjqioc- 
risy and vanity are often the disgusting re- 
sult. 

It is handsomer to remain in the establishment 
better than the establishment, and conduct that 
36 



226 LECTURE AT AMORY HALL. 

in the best manner, than to make a sally against 
evil by some single improvement, without support- 
ing it by a total regeneration. Do not be so vain 
of your one objection. Do you think there is only 
one ? Alas ! my good friend, there is no part of 
society or of life better than any other part. All 
our things are right and wrong together. The 
wave of evil washes all our institutions alike. Do 
you complain of our Marriage ? Our marriage is 
no worse than our education, our diet, our trade, 
our social customs. Do you complai» of the laws 
of Property ? It is a pedantry to give such impor- 
tance to them. Can we not play the game of life 
with these counters, as well as with those ; in the 
institution of property, as well as out of it. Let 
into it the new and renewing principle of love, 
and property will be universality. No one gives 
the impression of superiority to the institution, 
which he must give who will reform it. It makes 
no difference what you say: you must make me 
feel that you are aloof from it ; by your natural and 
supernatural advantages, do easily see to the end 
of it, — do see how man can do without it. Now 
all men are on one side. No man deserves to be 
heard against property. Only Love, only an 
Idea, is against property, as we hold it. 

I cannot afford to be irritable and captious, nor 
to waste all my time in attacks. If I should go 
out of church whenever I hear a false sentiment, I 
could never stay there five minutes. But wh}^ 
come out ? the street is as false as the church, and 
when I get to my house, or to my manners, or to 



NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 227 

my speech, I have not got away from the lie. 
When we see an eager assailant of one of these 
wrongs, a special reformer, we feel like asking 
him, What right have you, sir, to your one 
virtue ? Is virtue piecemeal ? This is a jewel 
amidst the rags of a beggar. 

In another way the right will be vindicated. 
In the midst of abases, in the heart of cities, in 
the aisles of false churches, alike in one place and 
in another, — wherever, namely, a just and heroic 
soul finds itself, there it will do what is next at 
hand, and by the new quality of character it 
shall put forth, it shall abrogate that old con- 
dition, law or school in which it stands, before the 
law of its own mind. 

If partiality was one fault of the movement 
party, the other defect was their reliance on As- 
sociation. Doubts such as those I have intimated^ 
drove many good persons to agitate the questions 
of social reform. But the revolt against the 
spirit of commerce, the spirit of aristocrac3^ and 
the inveterate abuses of cities, did not appear 
possible to individuals ; and to do battle against 
numbers, they armed themselves with numbers* 
and against concert, they relied on new concert. 

Following, or advancing beyond the ideas of 
St. Simon, of Fourier, and of Owen, three com- 
munities have already been formed in Massa- 
chusetts on kindred plans, and many more in the 
country at large. They aim to give every mem- 
ber a share in the manual labor, to give an equal 
reward to labor and to talent, and lo unite a 



228 LECTURE AT AMORY HALL. 

liberal culture with an education to labor. The 
scheme offers, by the economies of associated 
labor and expense, to make every member rich, 
on the same amount of propert}^ that, in separate 
families, would leave every member poor. These 
new associations are composed of men and wo- 
men of superior talents and sentiments : yet it 
may easily be questioned, whether such a com- 
munity will draw, except in its beginnings, the 
able and the good ; whether those who have 
energy will not prefer their chance of superior- 
ity and power in the world, to the humble cer- 
tainties of the Association ; whether such a 
retreat does not promise to become an asylum to 
those who have tried and failed, rather than a 
field to the strong ; and whether the members 
will not necessaril}^ be fractions of men, because 
each finds that he cannot enter it, without some 
compromise. Friendship and association are very 
fine things, and a grand phalanx of the best of 
the human race, banded for some catholic object: 
yes, excellent ; but remember that no society can 
ever be so large as one man. He in his friend- 
ship, in his natural and momentary associations, 
doubles or multiplies himself; but in the hour in 
which he mortgages himself to two or ten or 
twenty, he dwarfs himself below the stature of 
one. 

But the men of less faith could not thus be- 
lieve, and to such, concert appears the sole 
specific of strength. I have failed, and you have 
failed, but perhaps together we shall not faiL 



NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS, 229 

Our housekeeping is not satisfactory to us, but 
perhaps a phahinx, a community, might be. 
Many of us have differed in opinion, and we could 
fijid no man who cuuld make the truth plain, but 
possibly a college, or an ecclesiastical council 
might. I have not been able either to persuade 
my brother or to prevail on myself to disuse the 
traffic or the potation of brandy, but perhaps a 
pledge of total abstinence might effectually re- 
strain us. The candidate my party votes for is 
not to be trusted with a dollar, but he will be 
honest in the Senate, for we can bring public 
opinion to bear on him. Thus concert was the 
specific in all cases. But concert is neither bet- 
ter nor worse, neither more nor less potent than 
individual force. All the men in the world can- 
not make a statue walk and speak, cannot make a 
drop of blood, or a blade of grass, any more than 
one man can. But let there be one man, let there 
be truth in two men, in ten men, then is concert 
for the first time possible, because the force which 
moves the world is a new quality, and can never 
be furnished by adding whatever quantities of a 
different kind. What is the use of the concert of 
the false and the disunited ? There can be no 
concert in two, where there is no concert in one. 
When the individual is not individual^ but is 
dual; when his thoughts look one way, and his 
actions another; when his faith is traversed by 
his habits ; when his will, enlightened by reason, 
ts warped by his sense ; when with one hand he 



230 LECTURE AT AMGRY HALL. 

rows, and with the other backs Avater, what con- 
cert can be ? 

I do not wonder at the mterest these projects 
inspire. The world is awaking to the idea of 
union, and these experiments show what it is 
thinking of. It is and will be magic. Men will 
live and communicate, and plough, and reap, and 
govern, as by added ethereal power, when once 
they are united ; as in a celebrated experiment, by 
expiration and respiration exactly together, four 
persons lift a heavy man from the ground by the 
little finger ojily, and witliout sense of weight. 
But this union must be inward, and not one of 
covenants, and is to be reached by a reverse of 
the methods they use. The union is onl}' perfect, 
when all the uniters are isolated. It is the union 
of friends who live in different streets or towns. 
Each man, if he attempts to join himself to others, 
is on all sides cramped and diminished of his 
proportion ; and the stricter the union, the smaller 
and the more pitiful he is. But leave him alone, 
to recognize in every hour and place the secret 
soul, he will go up and down doing the works 
of a true member, and, to the astonishment of 
all, the work will be done with concert, though 
no man spoke. Government will be adamantine 
without any governor. The union must be ideal 
in actual individualism. 

I pass to the indication in some particulars of 
that faith in man, which the heart is preaching to 
us in these days, and which engages the more 
regard, from the consideration that the specula- 



NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS, 23 1 

tions of one generation are the history of the 
next following. 

In alluding just now to our system of educa- 
tion, I spoke of the deadness of its details. But 
it is open to graver criticism than the palsy of its 
members : it is a system of despair. The disease 
with which the human mind now labors is want 
of faith. Men do not believe in a power of edu- 
cation. We do not think we can speak to divine 
sentiments in man, and we do not try. We re- 
nounce all high aims. We believe that the 
defects of so many perverse and so many frivo- 
lous people, who make up society, are organic, 
and society is a hospital of incurables. A man 
of good sense but of little faith, whose compassion 
seemed to lead him to church as often as he went 
there, said to me, " that he liked to have con- 
certs, and fairs, and churches, and other public 
amusements go on." I am afraid the remark is 
too honest, and comes from the same origin as the 
maxim of the tyrant, "If you would rule the 
world quietly, you must keep it amused." I 
notice, too, that the ground on which eminent 
public servants urge the claims of popular edu- 
cation is fear : ' This country is filling up with 
thousands and millions of voters, and you must 
educate them to keep them from our throats.' 
We do not believe that any education, any system 
of philosophy, any influence of genius, will ever 
give depth of insight to a superficial mind. Hav- 
ing settled ourselves into this infidelity, our skill 
is exjjended to procure alleviations, diversion, 



232 LECTURE AT AMORY HALL. 

opiates. We adorn the victim with manual skill, 
his tongue with languages, his body with inoffen- 
sive and comely manners. So have we cunningly 
hid the tragedy of limitation and inner death we 
cannot avert. Is it strange that society should 
be devoured by a secret melancholy, which 
breaks through all its smiles, and all its gayety 
and games ? 

But even one step farther our infidelity has 
gone. It appears that some doubt is felt by good 
and wise men, whether really the happiness and 
probity of men is increased by the culture of the 
mind in those disciplines to which we give the 
name of education. Unhappily, too, the doubt 
€omes from schohirs, from persons who have tried 
these methods. In their experience, the scholar 
was not raised by the sacred thoughts amongst 
which he dwelt, but used them to selfish ends. 
He was a profane person, and became a showman, 
turning his gifts to a marketable use, and not to 
his own sustenance and growth. It was found 
that the intellect' could be independently devel- 
oped, that is, in separation from the man, as any 
single organ can be invigorated, and the result 
was monstrous. A canine appetite for knowledge 
was generated, which must still be fed, but was 
never satisfied, and this knowledge not being di- 
rected on action, never took the character of sub- 
stantial, humane truth, blessing those whom it 
entered. It gave the scholar certain powers of 
expression, the power of speech, the power of 



NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 233 

poetry, of literary art, but it did not briugliim to 
peace, or to beneficence. 

Wlien the literary class betray a destitution of 
faith, it is not strange that society should be dis- 
heartened and sensualized by unbelief. What 
remedy? Life must be lived on a higher plane 
We must go up to a higher platform, to which we 
are always invited to ascend ; there, the whole as- 
pect of things changes. I resist the skepticism 
of our education, and of our educated- men. I do 
not believe that the differences of opinion and 
character in men are organic. I do not recognize, 
beside the class of the good and the wise, a per- 
manent class of skeptics, or a class of conserva- 
tives, or of malignants, or of materialists. I do 
not believe in two classes. You remember the 
story of the poor woman who importuned King 
Philip of Macedon to grant her justice, which 
Philip refused: the woman exclaimed, "I ap- 
peal " : the king, astonished, asked to whom she 
ap23ealed: the woman replied, "from Philip drunk 
to Philip sober." The text will suit me very well. 
I believe not in two classes of men, but in man in 
two moods, in Philip drunk and Philip sober. I 
think, according to the good-hearted word of 
Plato, " Unwillingly the soul is deprived of truth." 
Iron conservative, miser, or thief, no man is, but 
by a supposed necessity, which he tolerates by 
shortness or torpidity of sight. The soul lets no 
man go without some visitations and holy-daj^s (^f 
a diviner presence. It would be easy to show, by 
a narrow scanning of any man's biography, that 



234 LECTURE AT AMORY HALL, 

we are not so wedded to our paltry perform- 
ances of every kind, but that every man has at 
intervals the grace to scorn his performances, in 
comparing them with his belief of what he should 
do, that he puts himself on the side of his ene- 
mies, listening gladly to what they say of him, 
and accusing himself of the same things. 

What is it men love in Genius, but its infinite 
hope, which degrades all it has done? Genius 
counts all its miracles poor and short. Its own 
idea is never executed. The Iliad, the Hamlet, 
the Doric column, the Roman arch, the Gothic 
minster, the German anthem, when they are ended, 
the master casts behind him. How sinks the 
song in the waves of melody which the universe 
pours over his soul ! Before that gracious Infi- 
nite, out of which he drew these few strokes, 
how mean they look, though the praises of the 
world attend them. From the triumphs of his 
art, he turns with desire to this greater defeat. 
Let those admire who will. With silent joy he 
sees himself to be capable of a beauty that 
eclipses all which his hands have done, all which 
human hands have ever done. 

Well, we are all the children of genius, the 
children of virtue, — and feel their inspirations in 
our happier hours. Is not every man sometimes a 
radical in politics ? Men are conservatives when 
they are least vigorous, or when they are most 
luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, 
or before taking their rest; when they are sick, or 
aged : in the morning, or when their intellect or 



NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 235 

their conscience have been aroused, when tliey 
hear music, or when they read poetry, they are 
radicals. In the circle of the rankest tories that 
could be collected in England, Old or New, let a 
powerful and stimulating intellect, a man of great 
heart and mind, act on them, and very quickly 
these frozen conservators will yield to the friendly 
influence, these hopeless will begin to hope, these 
haters will begin to love, these immovable statues 
will begin to spin and revolve. I cannot help re- 
calling the fine anecdote which Warton relates of 
Bishop Berkele}^, when he was preparing to leave 
England, with his plan of planting the gospel 
among the American savages. " Lord Bathurst 
told me, that the members of the Scriblerus club, 
being met at his house at dinner, they agreed to 
rally Berkeley, who was also his guest, on his 
scheme at Bermudas. Berkeley, having listened 
to the many lively things they had to say, begged 
to be heard in his turn, and displaj^ed his plan 
with such an astonishing and animating force of 
eloquence and enthusiasm, that they were struck 
dumb, and, after some pause, rose up all together 
with earnestness, exclaiming, ' Let us set out with 
him immediately.' " Men in all ways are better than 
the}^ seem. They like flattery for the moment, but 
they know the truth for their own. It is a foolish 
cowardice which keeps us from trusting them, and 
speaking to them rude truth. They resent your 
honesty for an instant, they will thank you for it 
always. What is it we heartily wish of each other ? 
Is it to be pleased and flattered ? No, but to be con- 



236 LECTURE AT AMORY HALL, 

victed and exposed, to be shamed out of our non- 
sense of all kinds, and made men of, instead of 
ghosts and phantoms. We are weary of gliding 
ghostlike through the world, which is itself so slight 
and unreal. We crave a sense of reality, though it 
comes in strokes of pain. I explain so, — by this 
manlike love of truth, — those excesses and errors 
imto which souls of great vigor, but not equal 
insight, often fall. They feel the poverty at the 
bottom of all the seeming affluence of the world. 
They know the speed with which they come 
straight through the thin masquerade, and conceive 
a disgust at the indigence of nature : Rousseau, 
Mirabeau, Charles Fox, Napoleon. Byron, — and I 
could easily add names nearer home, of raging rid- 
ers, who drive their steeds so hard, in the violence 
of living to forget its illusion : they would know 
the worst, and tread the floors of hell. The heroes 
of ancient and modern fame, Cimon, Themistocles, 
Alcibiades, Alexander, Csesar, have treated life 
and fortune as a game to be well and skilfully 
played, but the stake not to be so valued, but that 
any time it could be held as a trifle light as air, 
and thrown up. Csesar, just before the battle of 
Pharsalia, discourses with the Egyptian priest, 
concerning the fountains of the Nile, and offers to 
quit the army, the empire, and Cleopatra, if he 
will show him those mysterious sources. 

The same magnanimity shows itself in our 
social relations, in the preference, namely, which 
each man gives to the society of superiors over 
that of his equals. All that a man has, will he 



NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 2^7 

give for right relations with his mates. All that 
he has, will he give fur an erect demeanor in 
every com})any and on each occasion. He aims 
at such things as his neighbors prize, and gives 
his days and nights, his talents and his heart, 
to strike a good stroke, to acquit himself in all 
men's sight as a man. The consideration of an 
eminent citizen, of a noted merchant, of a man of 
mark in his profession; naval and military honor, 
a general's commission, a marshal's baton, a ducal 
coronet, the laurel of poets, and, anyhow procured, 
the acknowledgment of eminent merit, have this 
lustre for each candidate, that they enable him to 
walk erect and unashamed, in the presence of some 
persons, before whom he felt himself inferior. 
Having raised himself to this rank, having estab- 
lished his equality with class after class of those 
with whom he would live well, he still finds cer- 
tain others, before whom he cannot possess him- 
self, because they have somewhat fairer, somewhat 
grander, somewhat purer, which extorts homage of 
him. Is his ambition pure ? then will his laurels 
and his possessions seem worthless : instead of 
avoiding these men who make his fine gold dim, 
he will cast all behind him, and seek their" society 
only, woo and embrace this, his hiyniliation and 
mortification, until he shall know why his eye 
sh)ks, his voice is husky, and his brilliant talents 
are paralyzed in his presence. He is sure that the 
soul which gives the lie to all things, will tell none. 
His constitution will not mislead him. If it can- 
not carry itself as it ought, high and unmatchablo 



238 LECTURE AT AMORY HALL. 

in the presence of any man, if the secret oracles 
whose whisper makes the sweetness and dignity 
of his life, do here withdraw and accompany him 
no longer, it is time to undervalue what he has 
valued, to dispossess himself of what he has ac- 
:^uired, and with Csesar to take in his hand the 
army, the empire, and Cleopatra, and say, 'Ail 
these will I relinquish, if you will show me the 
fountains of the Nile.' Dear to us are those who 
love us; the swift moments we spend with them 
are a compensation for a great deal of misery ; they 
enlarge our life ; — but dearer are those who reject 
us as unworthy, for they add another life : they 
build a heaven before us, whereof we had not 
dreamed, and thereby supply to us new powers 
out of the recesses of the spirit, and urge us to 
new and unattempted performances. 

As every man at heart wishes the best and not 
inferior society, wishes to be convicted of his 
error, and to come to himself, so he wishes that the 
same healing should not stop in his thought, but 
should penetrate his will or active power. The self- 
ish man suffers more from his selfishness than he 
from whom that selfishness withholds some im- 
portant benefit. What he most wishes is to be 
lifted to some higher platform, that he ma}^ see 
beyond his present fear the transalpine good, so 
that his fear, his coldness, his custom, ma}^ be 
broken up like fragments of ice, melted and car- 
ried away in the great stream of good will. Do 
you ask my aid? I also wish to be a benefac- 
tor. I wish more to be a benefactor and serv- 



NEIV ENGLAND REFORMERS. 239 

ant, than you wish to be served by me, and surely 
the greatest good fortune that could befall me is 
precisely to be so moved by you that I should say, 
* Take me and all mine, and use me and mine 
freely to your ends ' ! for, I could not say it, other- 
wise than because a great enlargement had come 
to my heart and mind, which made me superior to 
my fortunes. Here we are paralyzed with fear ; 
we hold on to our little properties, house and land, 
office and money, for the bread which they have 
in onr experience yielded us, although we confess 
that our being does not flow through them. We 
desire to be made great, we desire to be touched 
with that fire which shall command this ice to 
stream, and make our existence a benefit. If 
therefore we start objections to your project, O 
friend of the slave, or friend of the poor, or of the 
race, understand well, that it is because we wish to 
drive you to drive us into your measures. We 
wish to hear ourselves confuted. We are haunted 
with a belief that you have a secret, which it 
would highliest advantage us to learn and we would 
force you to impart it to us, though it should bring 
us to prison, or to worse extremity. 

Nothing shall warp me from the belief that 
every man is a lover of truth. There is no pure 
lie, no pure malignity in nature. The entertain- 
ment of the proposition of depravity is the last 
profligacy and profanation. There is no skepti- 
cism, no atheism but that. Could it be received 
into common belief, suicide would unpeople the 
ph^net. It has had a name to live in some dogmatic 



240 LECTURE AT AMORY HALL, 

theology, but each man's innocence and his real 
liking of his neighbor have kept it a dead letter. I 
remember standing at the polls one day, when the 
anger of the political contest gave a certain grim- 
ness to the faces of the independent electors, and 
a good man at my side looking on the people, re- 
marked, " I am satisfied that the largest part of 
these men, on either side, mean to vote right." I 
suppose, considerate observers looking at the 
masses of men, in their blameless, and in their 
equivocal actions, will assent, that in spite of self- 
ishness and frivolity, the general purpose in the 
great number of persons is fidelity. The reason 
why any one refuses his assent to your opinion, or 
his aid to your benevolent design, is in you : he 
refuses to accept you as a briiiger of truth, be- 
cause, though you think you have it, he feels that 
you have it not. You have not given him the 
authentic sign. 

If it were worth while to run into details this 
general doctrine of the latent but ever soliciting 
Spirit, it would be easy to adduce illustration in 
particulars of a man's equality to the church, of 
his equality to the state, and of his equality to 
every other man. It is yet in all men's memory, 
that, a few years ago, the liberal churches com- 
plained that the Calvinistic church denied to them 
the name of Christian. I think the complaint was 
confession : a religious church would not complain. 
A religious man like Behmen, Fox, or Sweden- 
borg, is not irritated b}^ wanting the sanction of 



NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 24I 

the cliurcli, but the church feels the accusation of 
his presence and belief. 

It only needs that a just man should walk in 
lur streets, to make it appear how pitiful and in- 
nrtificial a contrivance is our legislation. The 
man whose part is taken, and who does not wait 
for society in anything, has a power which society 
cannot choose but feel. The familiar experiment, 
calted the hydrostatic paradox, in which a capillary 
column of water balances the ocean, is a symbol 
of the relation of one man to the whole family of 
men. The w^ise Dandini, on hearing the lives of 
Socrates, Pythagoras, and Diogenes read, "judged 
them to be great men every way, excepting, that 
they were too much subjected to the reverence of 
the laws, which to second and authorize, true vir- 
tue must abate very much of its original vigor." 

And as a man is equal to the church, and equal 
to the state, so he is equal to every other man. 
The disparities of power in men are superficial ; 
and all frank and searching conversation, in which 
a man lays himself open to his brother, apprizes 
each of their radical unity. When two persons 
sit and converse in a thoroughly good understand- 
ing, the remark is sure to be made. See how we 
have disputed about words ! Let a clear, appre= 
hensive mind, such as every man knows among his 
friends, converse with the most commanding 
poetic genius, I think it would appear that there 
was no inequality such as men fancy between 
them; that a perfect understanding, a like receiv- 
ing, a like perceiving, abolished differences, and 
37 



242 LECTURE AT AMORY HALL. 

the poet would confess that his creative iraagina- 
tion gave him no deep advantage, but only the 
superficial one, that he could express himself, and 
the other could not ; that his advantage was a 
knack, which might impose on indolent men, but 
could not impose on lovers of truth ; for thej 
know the tax of talent, or, what a price of great- 
ness the power of expression too often pays. I 
believe it is the conviction of the purest men, that 
the net amount of man and man does not much 
vary. Each is incomparably superior to his com- 
panion in some faculty. His want of skill in other 
directions has added to his fitness for his own 
work. Erch seems to have some compensation 
yielded to him by his infirmity, and every hin- 
drance operat<3S as a concentration of his force. 

These and the like experiences intimate that 
man stands in strict connection with a higher fact 
never yet manifested. There is power over and 
behind us, and we are the channels of its com- 
munications. We seek to say thus and so, and 
over our head sonie spirit sits, which contradicts 
what we say. We would persuade our fellow to 
this or that ; another self within our eyes dissuades 
him. That which we keep back, this reveals. In 
vain we compose our faces and our words ; it holds 
uncontrollable communication with the enemy, 
and he answers civilly to us, but believes the 
spirit. We exclaim, ' There's a traitor in the 
house ! ' but at last it appears that he is the true 
man, and I am the traitor. This open channel to 
the highest life is the first and last reality, so sub- 



NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 243 

tie, so quiet, yet so tenacious, that although I have 
never expressed the truth, and although I have 
never heard the expression of it from any other, I 
know that the whole truth is here for me. Wliat 
if I cannot answer your questions? I am not 
pained that I cannot frame a reply to the ques 
tion. What is the operation we call Providence ? 
There lies the unspoken thing, present, omnipres- 
ent. Every time we converse, we seek to trans- 
late it into speech, but whether we hit, or whether 
we miss, we have the fact. Every discourse is an 
approximate answer : but it is of small conse- 
quence that we do not get it into verbs and nouns, 
whilst it abides for contemplation forever. 

If the auguries of the prophesying heart shall 
make themselves good in time, the man who shall 
be born, whose advent men and events prepare 
and foreshow, is one who shall enjoy his connection 
with a higher life, with the man within man ; 
shall destroy distrust by his trust, shall use his 
native but forgotten methods, shall not take coun- 
sel of flesh and blood, but shall rely on the Law 
alive and beautiful, which works over our heads 
and under our feet. Pitiless, it avails itself of our 
success, when we obey it, and of our ruin, when 
we contravene it. Men are all secret believers in 
it, else the word justice would have no meaning: 
they believe that the best is the true ; that right 
is done at last ; or chaos would come. It rewards 
actions after their nature, and not after the design 
of the agent. ' Work,' it saith to man. ' in every 
hour, paid or unpaid, see only that thou work, and 



244 LECTURE AT AMORY HALL. 

thou canst not escape the reward: whether thy 
work be fine or coarse, plantmg corn, or writing- 
epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own 
approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as 
well as to the thought: no matter how often de- 
feated, you are born to victory. The reward of a 
thing well done, is to have done it.' 

As soon as a man is wonted to look beyond sur- 
faces, and to see how this high will prevails with- 
out an exception or an interval, he settles himself 
into serenity. He can already rely on the laws of 
gravity, that every stone will fall where it is due ; 
the good globe is faithful, and carries us securely 
through the celestial spaces, anxious or resigned : 
we need not interfere to help it on, and he will 
learn, one day, the mild lesson they teach, that our 
own orbit is all our task, and we need not assist 
the administration of the universe. Do not be so 
impatient to set the town right concerning the un- 
founded pretensions and the false reputation of 
<}ertain men of standing. They are laboring 
harder to set the town right concerning them- 
selves, and will certainly succeed. Suppress for a 
few days your criticism on the insufficienc}^ of this 
or that teacher or experimenter, and he will have 
demonstrated his insufficiency to all men's eyes. 
In like manner, let a man fall into the divine cir- 
cuits, and he is enlarged. Obedience to his genius 
is the only liberating influence. We wish to es- 
cape from subjection, and a sense of inferiority, 
- — and we make self-denying ordinances, we drink 
water, we eat grass, we refuse the laws, we go to 



NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS, 245 

jail : it is all in vain ; only by obedience to his 
genius; only by the freest activity in the way con- 
stitutional to him, does an angel seem to arise 
before a man, and lead him by the hand out of all 
the wards of the prison. 

That which befits us, embosomed in beauty and 
wonder as we are, is cheerfulness and courage, and 
the endeavor to realize our aspirations. The life 
of man is the true romance, which, when it is 
valiantly conducted, will yield the imagination a 
higher joy than any fiction. All around us, what 
powers are wrapped up under the coarse mattings 
of custom, and all wonder prevented. It is so 
wonderful to our neurologists that a man can see 
without his eyes, that it does not occur to them 
that it is just as wonderful that he should see with 
them ; and that is ever the difference between the 
wise and the unwise : the latter wonders at what 
is unusual, the wise man wonders at the usual. 
Shall not the heart which has received so much, 
trust the Power by which it lives ? May it not 
quit other leadings, and listen to the Soul that has 
guided it so gently, and taught it so much, secure 
that the future will be worthy of the past? 



THE END. 



